tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/political-cartoons-11389/articles
Political cartoons – The Conversation
2024-03-20T02:51:40Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226017
2024-03-20T02:51:40Z
2024-03-20T02:51:40Z
The National Cartoon Gallery has been closed down. Where to next for Australia’s valuable cartoon heritage?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582984/original/file-20240320-20-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=360%2C441%2C4536%2C2816&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">National Cartoon Gallery, the Bunker, Coffs Harbour.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bunker_Cartoon_Gallery_Coffs_Harbour.JPG">Binarysequence, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia lost one of its national institutions last weekend, almost without warning. <a href="https://nationalcartoongallery.com.au/">The National Cartoon Gallery</a>, at the Bunker, Coffs Harbour, closed its doors. </p>
<p>The non-profit gallery held <a href="https://www.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/Community-and-recreation/Creative-Coffs/National-Cartoon-Gallery">more than 23,000 originals and prints</a> from some of the greats of Australian and world cartooning – names such as Ron Tandberg, Judy Nadin, David Rowe and Cathy Wilcox. </p>
<p>It hosted exhibitions from Canberra’s Museum of Australian Democracy and other institutions, as well as local, national and international artists.</p>
<p>The annual round of cartooning awards – the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rotarycartoonawards/">Rotary Cartoon Awards</a>, the <a href="https://baldarchy.com.au/">Bald Archy</a> cartoon portrait competition, and the Australian Cartoonists’ Association <a href="https://cartoonists.org.au/stanleys">Stanley Awards</a> – all found permanent or temporary homes at the Bunker. In 2018, the gallery was given the <a href="https://cartoonists.org.au/stanleys/2018/awards">Jim Russell Award for Contribution to Cartooning</a> – quite the achievement.</p>
<p>But on Friday, March 15, a semi-animated video on the gallery’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalCartoonGallery">Facebook page</a> stated “WE’RE CLOSED for the foreseeable future”, though “events and functions scheduled for April will proceed as planned”. </p>
<p>Big red letters across the gallery’s <a href="https://nationalcartoongallery.com.au/">website</a> now read “CURRENTLY CLOSED”, in an appropriately cartoony font.</p>
<p>Much of the online ire (via the gallery’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NationalCartoonGallery">Facebook page</a>) has been directed towards the Coffs Harbour Council for discontinuing its financial support, but the council is adamant it has always stood at arm’s length from the gallery’s operations. </p>
<p>It has responded to news reports from Channel 7 and <a href="https://www.nbnnews.com.au/2024/03/18/national-cartoon-gallery-forced-to-close-its-doors/">Channel 9</a> with a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cityofcoffsharbour/posts/pfbid05ekH3nStcNDgK8s2xLFcgFC86trPJH3yHPkZfUyfU99eL7YYhdvKSKWbzqtcqUP9l">statement</a>, claiming the television networks have got it “badly wrong”. The statement points out the council </p>
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<p>does not own nor operate the gallery – the decision to close was made by the gallery itself. </p>
<p>Both networks were advised that the City has provided more than $820,000 in subsidies to the National Cartoon Gallery over the past nine years, including an annual subsidy of $60k for 2023/24, which was paid to the Gallery in August 2023. </p>
<p>The City received financial records from the Gallery on 11 March 2024 showing that the Gallery had become insolvent on 2nd March 2024, even after the receipt of the City’s $60k subsidy, suggesting its operations are and have been financially unsustainable in its current form for years.</p>
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<h2>Financial shortfall</h2>
<p>This financial news seems all the more shocking because, until very recently, the gallery was awash with cash. </p>
<p>It was set up in 1995, when the Coffs City Rotary Club formed the Bunker Cartoon Gallery Inc and raised over $350,000. In 2018, the gallery was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/abccoffscoast/photos/-26-million-for-the-coffs-harbours-bunker-cartoon-gallery-member-for-coffs-harbo/2441527719223235/">awarded $2.6 million under the New South Wales government’s Regional Cultural Fund</a> – a grant scheme which has since <a href="https://www.audit.nsw.gov.au/our-work/reports/integrity-of-grant-program-administration">come under considerable scrutiny</a>. </p>
<p>A further <a href="https://www.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/your-council/corporate-planning-and-reporting/att-1-2019-20-annual-report-section-1-significant-achievements.pdf">$213,000 came from the local council in March 2020</a>, after a budgeting shortfall with an expansion project. This was followed by an <a href="https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/bunker-cartoon-gallery-to-get-300000-funding">allocation of $300,000</a> in June 2021, to be paid in two instalments down to 2022. </p>
<p>A call went out in March 2023 for a <a href="https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/naming-rights-offered-as-next-national-cartoon-gallery-sponsor-2">“titanium” sponsor</a>, to contribute $400,000 for gallery naming rights. No one took up the opportunity.</p>
<p>Even so, the gallery’s finances – <a href="https://www.acnc.gov.au/charity/charities/168bf203-39af-e811-a963-000d3ad24077/documents/">freely available via the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission</a> – looked good, until a big shortfall in the financial year 2021-22, and a smaller one for the year ending June 2023.</p>
<p>The Bunker is far from the centre of Coffs Harbour, hidden in bushland. Before the COVID pandemic hit, the gallery was building attendances and had expectations of covering running costs. </p>
<p>But a new cultural precinct recently opened at <a href="https://www.fmmedia.com.au/sectors/yarrila-place-becomes-coffs-harbours-new-cultural-hub/">Yarrila Place</a>, only five minutes away from the Bunker by car. Concentrating a library, art museum and education space there has left the cartoon gallery isolated in more ways than one.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A historic fund-raising video for the National Cartoon Gallery.</span></figcaption>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cartoon-detectives-how-australias-most-famous-cartoon-was-lost-and-found-twice-194450">Cartoon detectives: how Australia's most famous cartoon was lost and found – twice</a>
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<h2>Global pressures</h2>
<p>While the gallery is unique in Australia – and in the southern hemisphere – its fate is shared by a number of similar cartoon galleries and museums around the globe. Funding has been the main issue. Private for-profit enterprises rarely succeed without institutional or charitable help.</p>
<p>Canada gained its Canadian Museum of Caricature/<em>Le Musée Canadien de la caricature</em> in 1989; <a href="https://canadianaci.ca/Encyclopedia/government-library-archives/">then lost it just five years later in 1994</a>. Thankfully, its 30,000 cartoons and other objects were saved for the <a href="https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/record?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=22314&new=-8585532793641554565">Library and Archives of Canada</a> in Ottawa.</p>
<p>London’s <a href="https://www.original-political-cartoon.com/">Political Cartoon Gallery</a> struggled to survive the pandemic, despite the energy of its creator, the entrepreneurial collector and scholar Tim Benson. He is still operating online, but the loss of the gallery space is a great shame.</p>
<p>In the US, there was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Comic_and_Cartoon_Art">Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art</a> in New York City between 2001 and 2012. It still exists as an entity, but has no physical presence. </p>
<p>The similarly named Museum of Cartoon Art collection began its life in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1974, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/09/archives/westchester-weekly-museum-takes-funnies-rather-seriously.html">with support from the Hearst Foundation</a>. It was driven by the creator of the classic comic strip Beetle Bailey, <a href="http://www.mortwalker.com/">Mort Walker</a> (1923-2018). The museum moved and changed its name several times, eventually merging with the Ohio State University’s <a href="https://cartoons.osu.edu/about-us/">Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum</a> in 2008. </p>
<p>Closer to home, cartoon enthusiast Jim Bridges’ longstanding effort to establish an Australian Cartoon Museum gained some space in Melbourne’s Docklands in the 2010s and <a href="https://www.docklandsdirectory.com.au/explore-docklands/the-australian-cartoon-museum">briefly existed in the shopping precinct</a>. But with Bridges’ retirement it looks to have ended its run. He has been looking for an appropriate venue to deposit his vast collection, accrued since the 1970s.</p>
<p>Major successes often survive due to philanthropy. <a href="https://bleedingcool.com/comics/london-cartoon-museum-bloomsbury-fitzrovia-martin-rowson-video/">The Cartoon Museum in London</a> is funded by a dedicated charity – the Cartoon Art Trust, which counted the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as its patron. Money from the National Lottery Heritage Fund has underwritten its activities in recent years. </p>
<p>The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco has endured constant relocations since 1984. <a href="https://www.cartoonart.org/about">Money from the Schulz Foundation has propped up its operations</a>, and it has survived thanks to fairer rents available at its current location.</p>
<p>One of the most successful and longstanding cartoon museums is the <a href="https://www.karikatur-museum.de/en/about-museum/">Wilhelm Busch German Museum for Caricature and Drawings</a>, founded in Hanover in 1937. Its history makes the financial troubles of other museums and galleries seem trivial: it was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943, before being rebuilt and reopening in 1950. </p>
<p>In a different league is the remarkable <a href="https://www.museeherge.be/en">Musée Hergé</a>, in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: a shrine to the creator of Tintin that possesses enough cultural capital to sustain itself commercially.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582982/original/file-20240320-16-p9uf1b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Musée Hergé in Brussels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mus%C3%A9e_Herg%C3%A9,_Brussels_10.jpg">Ank Kumar, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-scomo-to-albo-how-a-new-cast-of-characters-poses-a-challenge-for-cartoonists-184545">From ScoMo to Albo: how a new cast of characters poses a challenge for cartoonists</a>
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<h2>Where to next?</h2>
<p>The most enduring cartoon collections are those connected to major institutions. The cartoon heritage of the United States has benefited from the presence in the Library of Congress of the Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection of Caricature and Cartoon, begun by the enterprising ad-man Ed Swann in 1966, and now <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/27/1/111/694342">the core of US cartoon research</a>. </p>
<p>In France, the other mecca of cartoon and comic art, an official museum dedicated to <em>bande dessinée</em> (comics) has stood in <a href="https://www.angouleme-tourisme.com/en/explorer/la-destination/angouleme-et-la-bande-dessinee/">Angoulème, Charente</a>, since 2009.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the <a href="https://natlib.govt.nz/collections/a-z/new-zealand-cartoon-archive">New Zealand Cartoon and Comics Archive</a>, founded in 1990, survives and thrives as part of the Alexander Turnbull Library, within the National Library of New Zealand/Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. </p>
<p>Is it really OK that the Americans, Canadians, French and New Zealanders manage to do better by their cartoon and comic heritage than Australia? </p>
<p>Australians love their history and culture of cartooning, but seldom wonder about the state of the industry. People are happy to fill Dad’s Christmas stocking with Russ Radcliffe’s annual <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/best-australian-political-cartoons-2023-9781761380587">Best Australian Political Cartoons</a> volume, but we really have to do better.</p>
<p>Canberra’s <a href="https://www.moadoph.gov.au/">Museum of Australian Democracy</a>, located at Old Parliament House, may be the answer. The museum tours its annual <a href="https://www.moadoph.gov.au/visit/whats-on/exhibitions/behind-the-lines-the-year-in-political-cartoons">Behind the Lines exhibition</a> of political cartooning to capitals and regional centres for months every year – including, in recent years, to the Bunker. </p>
<p>What do we lose as a nation if the National Cartoon Gallery does not manage to survive? Is it really OK to let this aspect of our democratic heritage of humour slip away? Is there a dollar value that can be affixed to that? </p>
<p>If the campaign to save the gallery fails, the Museum of Australian Democracy may be the closest thing we have left to a national collection of our brilliant cartoonists’ work. Perhaps, with partners in Coffs Harbour and other cartoon capitals, that might be the best way to resolve our national cartooning emergency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226017/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Scully receives funding from the ARC for “Cartoon Nation: Australian Editorial Cartooning - Past, Present, and Future” DP230101348. An Associate Member of the Australian Cartoonists' Association, Richard was historical adviser to the NCG Board between 2018 and 2020, and has also collaborated with the Museum of Australian Democracy.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian receives funding from the ARC for “Cartoon Nation: Australian Editorial Cartooning - Past, Present, and Future” DP230101348. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Brookes receives funding from the Australian Research Council for “Cartoon Nation: Australian Editorial Cartooning - Past, Present, and Future” DP230101348.</span></em></p>
Is it really OK that the Americans, Canadians, French and New Zealanders manage to do better by their cartoon and comic heritage than Australia?
Richard Scully, Professor in Modern European History, University of New England
Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University
Stephanie Brookes, Senior Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/208952
2023-08-27T20:04:28Z
2023-08-27T20:04:28Z
How cartoonist Bruce Petty documented the Vietnam War – and how his great satire keeps finding its moment
<p>After seven decades as a visual satirist provoking Australia as it is and might be, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/bruce-petty-cartoonist-sculptor-and-oscar-winner-dies-aged-93-20230406-p5cysa.html">Bruce Petty passed away</a> at 93 on April 6 this year. </p>
<p>His career as a political cartoonist started with a trip to London in the late 1950s, then a stint at young Rupert Murdoch’s afternoon paper in Sydney, the Mirror. </p>
<p>He had a lead role as The Australian’s political cartoonist during the newspaper’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-helped-political-cartoonists-sharpen-their-edge-28845">radical first decade</a>, until it turned right during the Whitlam dismissal and Larry Pickering was promoted to favoured cartoonist. </p>
<p>Petty then moved to The Age in its glory days, where he was the acknowledged godfather of the troupe of brilliant cartoonists there at the time. He stayed until 2016, with Malcolm Turnbull his last prime minister, by which time the collapse of the broadsheet model was well advanced.</p>
<p>Throughout the decades, he moonlighted as an animator and author of books we might now call graphic essays or even novels, always at the cutting edge of thought and technology. </p>
<p>Inevitably, profiles stress he won an Academy Award for animation with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf50WytAC5Y">Leisure</a> (1976), but his deepest cultural intervention in the story of post-Menzies Australia came during the Vietnam War years. Australia changed and he was one of the <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/pettys-golden-thread/">major prophets</a> of change. </p>
<p>With a handful of others like Les Tanner and George Molnar, he woke editorial cartooning from a sleepy period telling fairly anodyne jokes and turned it into a mode of serious – if also often hilarious – satirical commentary on politics and society.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australian-helped-political-cartoonists-sharpen-their-edge-28845">The Australian helped political cartoonists sharpen their edge</a>
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<h2>In the vanguard</h2>
<p>Flinders University Museum of Art has <a href="https://www.flinders.edu.au/museum-of-art/collections/take-5/bruce-petty">a remarkable collection</a> of 73 cartoon originals and sketches from Petty’s most formative period. They were a characteristically generous gift by the artist, for a university then only three years old, and solicited by inaugural fine arts lecturer Robert Smith. </p>
<p>Among them are these five particularly vivid cartoons published in The Australian between May 1966 and September 1967. </p>
<p>These fragile objects, sometimes stuck together with glue when he changed a line of thought, take us straight into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War before the moratorium marches, when Prime Minister Harold Holt won the 1966 election in a landslide. </p>
<p>Petty was in the vanguard of a small but vocal opposition, drawing the war as a deep tragedy for the Vietnamese and a reckless farce perpetrated by the West. </p>
<p>One cartoon, Getting there is half the fun, about President Lyndon B. Johnson’s imperial triumph of a visit to Australia, marks the contrast.</p>
<p>The jagged black blob, which covers about half of the box, colours the movement from farce to tragedy arrestingly black.</p>
<p>Petty’s busy line attracted more than its fair share of the “my grandchild could draw better than that” sort of criticism, but it was entirely deliberate and brilliantly expressive. He doesn’t aim to please visually. He wants to stop readers with a shock of the unfamiliar and make them think. He is also a humane but stern critic of fools and villains. </p>
<p>Look at Hospitals – regrettable, but in the name of democracy, don’t hit a polling booth.</p>
<p>Are Johnson and his adipose generals conscious villains, or merely fools being driven by murderous ideas and scarcely sublimated self-interest? </p>
<p>I think Petty gives them the benefit of the doubt, just. But then he drives home the fact that being venal fools does not excuse them from the crime of bombing innocent people. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-australian-veterans-who-opposed-national-service-and-the-vietnam-war-158958">The forgotten Australian veterans who opposed National Service and the Vietnam War</a>
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<h2>Intimate sympathy</h2>
<p>Something similar happens with the privileged women under the hairdryers in the cartoon, Who says we women aren’t interested in politics?</p>
<p>Is this the moral fecklessness of consumer society projected onto women, or is it the dawn of concern for the people ravaged by a needless imperial war? As so often for Petty, it is both.</p>
<p>A large part of the power of these cartoons comes from Petty’s deep engagement with people forced to live with the war. His first book, Australian Artist in South East Asia (1962), is a graphic account of his journey through seven countries. He went to Vietnam again during the war as a cartoonist-correspondent. </p>
<p>He is drawing the Other – how could it be otherwise for a still White Australian audience? – but he is doing it with an intimate sympathy born of real knowledge. </p>
<p>I must say, I’ve found the first day of democracy a little disappointing is a wry and ironic cartoon about the debauched South Vietnamese election then under way, but it takes you to the people actually affected.</p>
<p>Finally, Peace Feeler, published in 1967. </p>
<p>Johnson talked peace with South Vietnamese generals in Honolulu, even while continuing to bomb the Viet Cong with huge and brutal firepower. </p>
<p>Publish this cartoon unchanged today, and everyone would see it as about the war in Ukraine. Sadly, great satire like Petty’s keeps finding its moment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-political-cartooning-the-end-of-an-era-81680">Friday essay: political cartooning – the end of an era</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208952/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian receives funding from the Australian Research Council for “Cartoon Nation: Australian Editorial Cartooning - Past, Present, and Future” DP230101348. </span></em></p>
Bruce Petty woke editorial cartooning from a sleepy period telling fairly anodyne jokes and turned it into a mode of serious – if also often hilarious – satirical commentary on politics and society.
Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190338
2022-09-12T20:27:51Z
2022-09-12T20:27:51Z
Solemnity and celebration: how political cartoonists have handled the death of a monarch, from Victoria to Elizabeth II
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483906/original/file-20220912-12-azifze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C958%2C1268&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Francis Carruthers Gould, 'The Mourner', Fun, February 2, 1901.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It sounds very familiar – a well-respected monarch dies, and a radical, left-leaning, Antipodean cartoonist struggles to find the right tone to commemorate the event. </p>
<p>He is torn between his distaste for what he sees as the archaic, pre-modern institution of monarchy, and the undoubted personal quality of the late incumbent. </p>
<p>More used to poking fun at the great and good, or attacking governments for their weak-willed or wrong-headed policies, changing tone to reverence and respect is difficult. </p>
<p>But in the end, he manages to strike a very good balance and produce a memorable cartoon.</p>
<p>The well-respected monarch was George VI; the radical, left-leaning, Antipodean cartoonist was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Low_(cartoonist)">David Low</a>; and the year was 1952. With <a href="https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=LSE8008">From One Man to Another</a>, Low not only conveyed his own respects, man-to-man, but imagined also the British workman, his hat in his hand and sleeves rolled-up, casting a humble bunch of flowers towards a mighty tombstone labelled “The Gentlest of the Georges”. </p>
<p>This was an expression of democratic – even socialist – sensibility, in an age when monarchy seemed, to many, to be increasingly out-of-step with the advance of modernity and the inexorable march of post-war history.</p>
<p>Low was compelled to look back, not forward, conscious he had an historic role to fulfil in commemorating the passing of the king who had embodied so much of the stolid, British pluck and humility during the second world war. </p>
<p>He reflected <a href="https://archive.org/details/lowsautobiograph017633mbp/page/n225/mode/2up">in his 1956 autobiography</a> that he hated the old-fashioned, “The Nation Mourns”-style of Victorian cartoon, but it was to that set of images and traditions that he turned.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/16-visits-over-57-years-reflecting-on-queen-elizabeth-iis-long-relationship-with-australia-170945">16 visits over 57 years: reflecting on Queen Elizabeth II's long relationship with Australia</a>
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<h2>A long lineage</h2>
<p>Cartoonists have had to do something similar in 2022, with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. </p>
<p>In the United Kingdom, the likes of <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/peter-brookes-times-cartoon-september-9-2022-vzfhf606t">Peter Brookes</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2022/sep/08/ben-jennings-on-the-death-of-the-queen-cartoon">Ben Jennings</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Adamstoon1/status/1567968191934271489">Christian Adams</a> have all been conscious of the need for solemnity, as well as celebration. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1567968191934271489"}"></div></p>
<p>Across the world, cartoonists have had to struggle with much the same thing, and some favoured themes are already apparent: <a href="https://www.electriccitymagazine.ca/touching-cartoon-salute-depicting-the-queen-reuniting-with-prince-philip-and-paddington-bear/">Elizabeth reunited</a> with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, or troops of <a href="https://twitter.com/BennettCartoons/status/1568017878225682433">sad corgis</a>; the Union Flag with an Elizabeth II-shaped hole at the centre; or a tube train with a sole occupant heading into a blaze of light at the end of the tunnel.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1568017878225682433"}"></div></p>
<p>All of these images speak to the style and the visual language of today, but also share a lineage several centuries old. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-york-times-ends-daily-political-cartoons-but-its-not-the-death-of-the-art-form-118754">The New York Times ends daily political cartoons, but it's not the death of the art form</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A bereaved widow, again</h2>
<p>Nobody would have thought to depict Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 with her travelling to heaven by tube, although the Underground seems emblematic of her age (London’s first underground railway was <a href="https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/londons-transport-a-history/london-underground/a-brief-history-of-the-underground">opened in January 1863</a>, 26 years into Victoria’s reign). </p>
<p>There were no sad corgis (that breed only became associated with the Royal Family <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-12/queen-elizabeth-ii-loved-corgi-dogs-throughout-her-life/101428106">from the 1930s</a>), but a downcast British Lion was imagined by Francis Carruthers Gould in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fun_(magazine)">Fun</a>.</p>
<p>The theme of a bereaved widow finally reunited with her spouse is clearly a parallel (Albert, the Prince Consort had died in 1861). So too is the very idea that a cartoonist should commemorate the event – something unthinkable when William IV died in 1837, or so much so when George IV died in 1830 that a well-known cartoonist <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1882-1209-677">never published his draft sketch</a>.</p>
<p>The sheer immensity of the loss of Victoria called for some pretty special treatment, at a time when cartooning was a lot more formal and respectable than it is today. </p>
<p>It preoccupied several days’ work for Linley Sambourne, chief cartoonist of London’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_(magazine)">Punch</a> (for a while, a magazine that was almost as much a British institution as the monarchy). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483872/original/file-20220912-35643-w6ekbu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Linley Sambourne, ‘Recquiescat!’, Punch; or the London Charivari, January 30, 1901.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Requiescat was huge: a double-page spread in sombre black-and-white, depicting a gaggle of goddesses in mourning for their lost monarch. </p>
<p>Allegorical female figures representing countries were all the rage in Victorian and Edwardian cartooning (something David Low also hated and thought was “moth-eaten” by the time he was at his peak). </p>
<p>England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India were all included by Sambourne. </p>
<p>Just one goddess was enough for his junior colleague, Bernard Partridge, who imagined <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clio">Clio</a> – History herself – adding the name of Victoria to the roll of great monarchs.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483874/original/file-20220912-57115-6nevpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernard Partridge, ‘The Roll of Great Monarchs’, Punch; or the London Charivari, January 30, 1901.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was the same when Victoria’s son and heir, Edward VII, died in May, 1910. </p>
<p>Bernard Partridge went with just two figures, rather than a whole host, imagining a weeping Britannia seated before the empty Coronation Chair, an angel of peace reaching out to touch her shoulder. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483876/original/file-20220912-22-u9nfkh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernard Partridge, ‘An Empire s Grief’, Punch; or the London Charivari, May 11, 1910.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was designed to express “an empire’s grief” in terms even more explicit than Sambourne had done with Victoria, but the imagery was very British; even domestic. </p>
<p>Minus the caption, it could almost be recycled in 2022 - crucially, the monarch does not actually appear. So too, Partridge’s offering in January 1936, when George V died (apparently by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/29/king-george-v-was-murdered-not-euthanised">hand of his doctor</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=941&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483877/original/file-20220912-66609-1dpxdp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernard Partridge, ‘To the Memory of His Majesty King George’, Punch; or the London Charivari, January 29, 1936.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Britannia tolling a bell from a medieval bell-tower, with a fog-laden London skyline in the background. Clear the fog, add a Gherkin and a Shard, and the effect would be much the same.</p>
<p>While David Low struggled against the Victorian style of memorial cartoon, it is still very much with us. As so often, cartoons can encapsulate a whole host of feelings that mere words can’t express.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1567969118439227393"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190338/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Scully receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the Political Cartoon Society, the Cartoon Museum (London), and the Australian Cartoonists' Association.</span></em></p>
A cartoon commemorating the death of King William IV in 1837 would have been unthinkable; by the time Queen Victoria died in 1901, newspapers had changed.
Richard Scully, Associate Professor of Modern European History, University of New England
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176928
2022-06-09T12:33:31Z
2022-06-09T12:33:31Z
Super Moustache: how a Venezuelan cartoon turned into a political campaigner
<p>“Stupid idiots! Can’t you overthrow him? He’s just a bus driver!” rages a blonde, coiffed character from inside a White House-style building located “somewhere on planet Earth”. The cartoon villain looks like a cross between Donald Trump and The Incredibles antagonist Syndrome. He’s shrieking in Spanish, with a heavy US accent, into a mobile phone.</p>
<p>“We’ve tried everything!” simper the two characters he’s addressing, who look very much like Venezuelan opposition politicians Henry Ramos Allup and Julio Borges. The villain presses a red button that jettisons a drone through the roof of the “White House”. A cartoon map shows the drone heading towards a region that closely resembles the northern coast of South America, before targeting a country shaped very much like Venezuela.</p>
<p>So begins the first episode of the Venezuelan animated cartoon, <a href="https://twitter.com/Superbigote21">Súper Bigote</a> (Super Moustache) – starring a heroic character with a moustache like that of the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1465778623399485446"}"></div></p>
<p>The Venezuelan government is so fond of Súper Bigote that it promotes the cartoon via social media. President Maduro recently encouraged his followers to download Instagram filters to take photographs of themselves as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNSjtbhYUTM&ab_channel=MovimientoRojo">Súper Bigote</a>. And when sharing an episode in which the US attempts to block the entry of COVID-19 vaccines into Venezuela, vice-minister of business Luis Villegas Ramírez <a href="https://twitter.com/luis_villegasr/status/1479564069455765507">tweeted</a>: “It’s great! Don’t miss it!”</p>
<p>Throughout the country, images of Súper Bigote appear to be multiplying. In northern Venezuela, governor Rafael Lacava has controversially <a href="https://www.todosahora.com/noticias-de-venezuela/noticias-de-carabobo/lacava-renombro-plaza-super-bigote-playa-waikiki/">renamed a plaza</a> after Súper Bigote and included an image <a href="https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1530017154032091136/photo/1">of him</a> on the walls of a remodelled hospital. In the carnival <a href="https://twitter.com/delcyrodriguezv/status/1498105741244342274?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1498105741244342274%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Frdnoticiasven.net%2Fel-nuevo-disfraz-de-los-ninos-super-bigote-es-tendencia-en-venezuela%2F">processions this year</a>, a time when children traditionally parade in fancy dress, Súper Bigote was a popular costume, at least according to vice-president Delcy Rodríguez. </p>
<p>While government supporters celebrate the cartoon and their solidarity with an “indestructible” president who is “hero and defender” of the country against threats and difficulties, many others see Súper Bigote as a cynical attempt to create a personality cult. With low popularity ratings, Maduro needs to strengthen his image for the 2024 <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/mundo/super-bigote-el-superheroe-basado-en-nicolas-maduro-que-combate-eu-y-opositores-de-venezuela">presidential elections</a>, argues Venezuelan sociologist Trino Márquez.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-york-times-ends-daily-political-cartoons-but-its-not-the-death-of-the-art-form-118754">The New York Times ends daily political cartoons, but it's not the death of the art form</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The cartoon was first broadcast on Venezuela’s state TV channel Venezolana de Televisión (VTV) in December 2021. To date, nine episodes of Súper Bigote have been broadcast on VTV. Each depicts the character using his superpowers to foil dastardly plots devised and financed by the “great villain” to the north, with the aim of sowing chaos and division in a fictional version of <a href="https://ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/especial/super-bigote-el-animado-que-revoluciona-las-redes/">Venezuela</a>. It was recently announced that <a href="http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve/super-bigote-ahora-en-historieta-ilustrada/">an illustrated comic strip</a> is now planned based on the same character.</p>
<h2>Cartoon culture</h2>
<p>Latin America has a long tradition of using cartoons, comics and humour to provoke discussion around national and international <a href="https://revistas.udesc.br/index.php/tempo/article/view/2175180308182016040/6039">stories</a>. In Peru, cartoonist Juan Acevedo uses a <a href="https://fsp.duke.edu/speakers/juan-acevedo/">rodent</a>, El Cuy, to explore social and political issues, including the <a href="https://elcomercio.pe/luces/comic/el-cuy-vs-la-pandemia-entranable-personaje-de-juan-acevedo-ensena-a-enfrentar-la-muerte-noticia/">pandemic</a>; in Argentina, Quino’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-mafalda-with-love-three-lessons-from-the-late-quino-and-his-immortal-creation-147311?fbclid=IwAR0V9njPWtd6iEoP1YJi1znEfL_sfA9f3gioBjD5YWHFL0q4QfhFM2uJREs">Mafalda</a> character challenges middle-class values; and in Chile, Pepo’s cartoon condor <a href="https://www.diarioconcepcion.cl/cultura-y-espectaculos/2019/09/29/condorito-testigo-de-la-historia-de-chile-y-del-mundo.html?fbclid=IwAR1mxh2E-NyA0tX2m9GHe5hYbjjSD9IxcU0fSvsPhRPGYKwhhRMl9cwIM1k">Condorito</a> has commented on political events for decades.</p>
<p>When then-Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno <a href="https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lenin-Moreno-is-Out-of-Reality-President-Maduro-Warns-20191009-0005.html">accused</a> Maduro of causing protests in Ecuador in October 2019, the cartoonist joked on state TV:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>President Lenin Moreno comes along and says that what’s happening there is my fault. That just by wiggling my moustache I can overthrow governments. I’m already wondering what government I can overthrow next with my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=I9C1POJKPew&ab_channel=LuiginoBracciRoadesdeVenezuela">moustache</a>. I’m not Superman, I’m Super Moustache!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bE85dX6XeoE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>According to Omar Cruz, who created Súper Bigote: “Venezuelan humour is part of our idiosyncrasy.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At good times and bad, we resort to humour. So much so that it’s humour, and not politics, that can unite the government and the opposition. In round table discussions, humour has always been there because we know that for us, humour is a very serious matter.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 2004, during the government of Hugo Chávez, Juan Forero wrote in The New York Times that, in a political situation with "more than its share of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/world/caracas-journal-venezuela-in-turmoil-can-t-keep-from-laughing.html">absurdities</a> and larger-than-life characters”, humour could be used to skewer the powerful and snicker at their perceived failures. </p>
<p>In a political situation with more than its share of absurdities and larger-than-life characters, Súper Bigote, in poking fun at a seemingly indestructible leader and his inept opposition, throws humorous light onto profound and serious tensions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Marsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A Venezuelan cartoon character has been adopted by the government to help their popularity.
Hazel Marsh, Associate professor, University of East Anglia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176631
2022-03-02T22:07:51Z
2022-03-02T22:07:51Z
Mask or no mask: Stop using fat people in political cartoons
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447345/original/file-20220218-49159-qjskhu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C9%2C6011%2C4001&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Political cartoons and memes have made it clear that if there’s something to agree about on all sides of the political spectrum, its that fat people are an easy target.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-bramhall-editorial-cartoons-2020-jul-20200708-zl4mvvuoejbv5ai32nsg32hjki-photogallery.html">Political cartoons and memes</a> have made it clear that if there’s something to agree about on all sides of the political spectrum, it’s that fat people are an easy target.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the vaccine rollout, <a href="https://www.syracuse.com/opinion/2021/05/editorial-cartoons-for-may-9-2021-herd-immunity-liz-cheney-help-wanted.html">a political cartoon was circulated</a> that pictured a thin, vaccinated person, trying to reach herd immunity but unable to do so because of the ball and chain on his ankle; a fat man who had “anti-vaxxers” written on his back.</p>
<p>Now that the pandemic has dragged on, those who <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/anthea-turner-twitter-fat-shaming-covid-face-mask-b919526.html">are against mask mandates have circulated a cartoon</a> that pictures a pro-mask and presumably pro-vaccine fat person who uses a mobility aid, asking the thin person wear a mask to protect their health.</p>
<p>What’s a person who is against <a href="https://www.bmc.org/glossary-culture-transformation/fatphobia">fat loathing</a> to do?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/discrimination-against-fat-people-is-so-endemic-most-of-us-dont-even-realise-its-happening-94862">Discrimination against fat people is so endemic, most of us don’t even realise it’s happening</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In these cartoons, it’s clear that both sides of the political spectrum use fat bodies to represent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00477-5">ignorant people who are holding back the “good citizens.”</a> If you criticize the fat loathing in these cartoons, you risk political disloyalty and being gobbled up by whatever side of the political debate finds your protest useful.</p>
<h2>Under the radar</h2>
<p>These “comedic stigmas” are not limited to political cartoons; they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007054618340">pervasive on television</a> and across various forms of media. </p>
<p>Fat loathing often goes under the radar in supposed “progressive” left circles, where those might think of themselves as holding higher moral ground for body positivity and for being pro-diversity. However, most <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/981296/5-scathingly-funny-cartoons-about-antivaxxers-jeopardizing-herd-immunity">anti-fat cartoons</a> are from “progressive” <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-bramhall-editorial-cartoons-2020-jul-20200708-zl4mvvuoejbv5ai32nsg32hjki-photogallery.html">pro-vaccine and pro-science</a> viewpoints. </p>
<p>Left-leaning politics consistently hold up <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/03/cartoonists-have-their-say-on-texas-freeze-and-power-outage/">fat people as the harbingers</a> of difficult times and environmentalists disproportionately lump them as the <a href="https://cjee.lakeheadu.ca/article/view/1224">cause of climate change</a>. They are represented as an <a href="https://www.nutritionunplugged.com/2009/08/lose-the-blubber-ad-is-low-blow-from-peta/">embodiment of animal cruelty by PETA</a> — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1242359">marginalizing fat vegans</a> who want to join the movement. </p>
<p>How can fat people, as well as critics of fat loathing, be expected to align with political movements using rhetoric that maligns their bodies?</p>
<h2>An evolutionary backslide</h2>
<p>Fat loathing has crossed political divides for over a century in the United States. In her book, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814727690/fat-shame/"><em>Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture</em></a>, Amy Farrell details how both sides of women’s suffrage portrayed their opponents as fat over a century before any “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-End-of-the-Obesity-Epidemic/Gard/p/book/9780415489881">obesity epidemic</a>” was created through <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyi052">shifting and flawed BMI designations</a>. </p>
<p>Proponents of suffrage portrayed themselves as slight, whimsical and feminine while those who opposed were portrayed as old, fat and sour-faced. These cartoons sent the message that if women got the vote, they would still be feminine and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2010.523680">proper white mothers</a>.</p>
<p>Opposition cartoons went in the reverse: pro-suffrage women were portrayed as large, muscular and domineering (they don’t need the vote — they already have too much power in the home!). </p>
<p>Some of these cartoons even represented suffrage proponents in ways that evoked blackface, implying that white women garnering the vote would upset racial hierarchies. When white women get the vote, the story goes, it will upset gender roles, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2010.523680">understood as women getting big and fat, signifying an evolutionary backslide</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1047309572606578690"}"></div></p>
<h2>‘Fit’ for citizenship</h2>
<p>These representations and those related to COVID-19 demonstrate who is considered <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203079751-49/political-economy-obesity-fat-pay-alice-julier">“fit” for a nation’s progress</a>. In this case, progress is how people properly navigate the pandemic.</p>
<p>Political rhetoric, as demonstrated in cartoons, focuses on who’s a trustworthy citizen acting in the best interests of the nation. Fat is not just a shorthand for <a href="https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/opinion/grant-frost-a-whirl-into-anti-vaxxer-world-where-credulity-trumps-credentials-100603228/">being misinformed or ignorant</a>, it pertains to whose bodies are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1354039">considered ideal</a> and who should reproduce to produce more citizens.</p>
<p>Think of high-profile politicians who have disagreeable ideas. They are consistently portrayed as fatter than they are as a way of demonstrating that they are not “fit” for citizenship, the nation, or respectable public debate. </p>
<p>It should be possible to point out the problems behind fat loathing without being politically aligned with the person whose body is being lampooned. One doesn’t need to think too deeply to conjure <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2021.2014121">fat politicians whose ideas they disagree with</a> — but, should people keep silent about these rhetorical techniques?</p>
<h2>Effects of fat loathing</h2>
<p>Fatness has also been used to signify other “disordered desires” that need to get back under control through proper discipline. Community health researcher Lynn Gerber’s book, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo12079657.html"><em>Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America</em></a>, details how conversion therapy and weight-loss movements of the mid-20th century had overlapping goals to punish appetites for both food and sex on the grounds that fatness and queerness offend a particular interpretation of a Christian God. </p>
<p>Given these connections, many people who would consider themselves pro-sexual diversity would never think that diet and weight-loss industries are connected. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-108X(199609)20:2%3C135::AID-EAT3%3E3.0.CO;2-H">Yet gay men have significantly higher levels of bodily dissatisfaction</a> than straight men, and fat loathing in political cartoons continues to be a way to <a href="https://twitter.com/albertaNDP/status/1111375940032946176">lampoon anti-gay politicians</a>.</p>
<p>I haven’t even discussed the concrete effects of continued fat loathing in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2006.07.016">accessing nutritional care</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0004">socialization in high school</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/20.4.352">academic performance</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221309.2012.726288">post-secondary education</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.22.3.223">mental health support</a>, <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/calr90&div=11&id=&page=">employment</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2008.09.008">career advancement</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2005.168">dating</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048448">health care</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v20n02_04">cancer screening</a>. Or how fat people are subject <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00646.x">to harassment</a> <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/9780814777435-016/html">and bullying</a>. Fatness compounds <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/670607/belly-of-the-beast-by-dashaun-harrison/">racialized police brutality</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J013v20n02_04">racial disparities</a>. </p>
<p>Representation matters in forming political solidarities. These issues require attention that will only come about if fat people are empowered to critique the very groups so willing to instrumentalize their bodies for political gain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristin Rodier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Fat people need to be empowered to critique the very groups so willing to instrumentalize their bodies for political gain.
Kristin Rodier, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Athabasca University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171283
2021-12-06T13:42:10Z
2021-12-06T13:42:10Z
How did Uncle Sam become a symbol for the United States?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434191/original/file-20211126-23-1i51zrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C76%2C2955%2C1688&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">You never know where Uncle Sam will make an appearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/giant-motorcycle-riding-uncle-sam-carries-new-york-firemen-news-photo/689423?adppopup=true">David McNew/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>How did Uncle Sam become a symbol for the United States? – Henry E., age 10, Somerville, Massachusetts</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Most Americans easily recognize <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-nicknamed-uncle-sam">Uncle Sam</a> as a symbol of the United States or a national nickname. Typically portrayed as an older white man with a long white goatee and a top hat, he’s almost always decked out in red, white and blue attire. </p>
<p>His image represents the U.S. government in <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/presidents-day-2021-opinion-is-it-time-to-re-think-uncle-sam/#slide-8">political cartoons</a>, or as a stand-in for the American people everywhere from <a href="https://www.atlutd.com/news/five-stripe-flashbacks-tifos">soccer games</a> to <a href="https://eduardobarraza.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Political-rally-draws-candidates-for-Arizona-Nov-6-general-election/G0000CN7w.HyKs10/I000075uKKFICALQ">political rallies</a>.</p>
<p>He has come to represent a patriotic ideal in popular culture. In the Marvel Universe, <a href="https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Captain_America:_The_First_Avenger">Captain America</a>’s costume resembles what Uncle Sam wears. That character is not only strong, but compassionate.</p>
<p>The most familiar Uncle Sam image of all time is an <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsc.03521/">Army recruiting poster</a> designed by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/03/the-uncle-sam-i-want-you-poster-is-100-years-old-almost-everything-about-it-was-borrowed/">James Montgomery Flagg</a> in 1917. In it, Uncle Sam proclaims “I WANT YOU,” while sternly pointing directly at the onlooker.</p>
<p>That World War I publicity campaign worked so well that the government used the image again to recruit soldiers and other members of the armed forces during <a href="https://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/collection/object.asp?ID=548">World War II</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Uncle Sam points at the onlooker in an iconic 'I Want You for the U.S. Army' recruitment poster." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=806&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434193/original/file-20211126-21-1mq0det.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1013&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artist James Montgomery Flagg designed this iconic 1917 recruitment poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsc.03521/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Columbia’ and ‘Brother Jonathan’</h2>
<p>Uncle Sam isn’t the only symbol that U.S. artists and illustrators have used to convey political issues of the day.</p>
<p>One of the earliest symbolic stand-ins for the United States was “<a href="https://www.meetamerica.com/before-lady-liberty-reigned-columbia-was-americas-patriotic-female-personification">Columbia</a>,” a female icon usually dressed in a toga.</p>
<p>In one famous depiction, she’s seen mourning President Abraham Lincoln, joined by <a href="https://www.royalmint.com/britannia/britannia-icon-on-the-coin/">Britannia</a>, another female character who personifies England, and a formerly enslaved person whose plight remains unclear.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sorrowful Britannia, standing, lays a wreath on Lincoln's shrouded body while Columbia weeps as she clutches the U.S. flag and a freed enslaved person mourns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434194/original/file-20211126-15-js68ej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Britannia consoles Columbia while a formerly enslaved person weeps in this 1865 image by the artist John Tenniel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/britannia-sympathises-with-columbia-1865-only-days-after-news-photo/463927737">The Cartoon Collector/Print Collector via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So where did Uncle Sam’s name come from? According to a <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-nicknamed-uncle-sam">resolution Congress approved in 1961</a>, it originated with meat supplier Samuel Wilson of Troy, New York. During the War of 1812, he marked his materials for military use with “U.S.” Workers at the time would tell a joke along the lines that “Uncle Sam” Wilson was feeding the Army.</p>
<p>Perhaps not coincidentally, two African-American Marvel superheroes are named Sam Wilson: “<a href="https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/The_Falcon_and_The_Winter_Soldier">The Falcon</a>,” who goes on to become Captain America following Steve Rogers’ retirement, and Samantha Wilson, who assumed the role of Captain America in the recent <a href="https://www.marvel.com/comics/series/20505/spider-gwen_2015_-_2018">Spider-Gwen series</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Brother Jonathan holds a scythe in a 19th-century postcard." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1040&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434211/original/file-20211126-25-2ylidz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1306&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Brother Jonathan,’ an early U.S. symbol, may have gradually turned into Uncle Sam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/brother-jonathan-an-early-personification-of-the-united-news-photo/505925783">Kean Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But there was another figure resembling Uncle Sam called <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/brother-jonathan-uncle-sam">Brother Jonathan</a> who emerged earlier.</p>
<p>That personification of the United States was possibly modeled on <a href="https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/brother-jonathan-american-icon/">John Trumbull</a>, a Colonial Connecticut governor who opposed British rule during the War of Independence. <a href="http://www.sonofthesouth.net/uncle-sam/brother-jonathan.htm">Brother Jonathan may have morphed into Uncle Sam</a> around the time of the Civil War, before fading away.</p>
<p>In an 1876 advertisement, this young, slender man who symbolized the nation wore clothing that echoes the American flag. He looked a lot like a younger and cleanshaven version of Uncle Sam.</p>
<p>It’s possible that the lankiness and facial features that Uncle Sam inherited from later depictions of Brother Jonathan were a tribute to <a href="https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/uncle-sam-army-recruitment-poster/10169">President Abraham Lincoln</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com</a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.</em></p>
<p><em>And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Bruski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The iconic image may have originated with a meat supplier named Samuel Wilson. Or not.
Paul Bruski, Associate Professor of Graphic Design, Iowa State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/168311
2021-09-21T10:41:42Z
2021-09-21T10:41:42Z
The Prince – the great tradition of satirising the royal family is under threat as they become more ‘human’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422192/original/file-20210920-14371-a38tvm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1914%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pressroom.warnermedia.com/na/image/prncs1ep0111screengrab94a">HBO Max.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The adult animated satire, <a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/british-royal-family-series-hbo-max-the-prince-1203474443/">The Prince</a>, has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/30/the-prince-royal-hbo-series-backlash/">sparked outrage</a> for its portrayal of the British royal family as a mob of hyper-privileged halfwits, hopelessly out of touch with contemporary society. They are led by Queen Elizabeth II, imagined here as a bling-coated mafia boss. </p>
<hr>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/the-prince-the-great-tradition-of-satirising-the-royal-family-is-under-threat-as-they-become-more-human-168311&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The Telegraph described the show as “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/hbos-prince-hollywoods-insult-royal-family-disgusting-puerile/">grossly offensive</a>”. While <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/30/the-prince-royal-hbo-series-backlash/">The Washington Post</a> reported that a torrent of complaints labelled it “wrong”, “disgusting” and guilty of fuelling “hatred toward Britain’s royals”.</p>
<p>But The Prince is far from the first instance of satire to poke fun at the royal family – nor is it the most biting in this 300-year-old tradition. </p>
<p>In many ways, royal figures are the perfect subjects for satire. Traditionally, the satirist seeks to reveal and skewer stupidity, ridiculousness and hypocrisy and, in most cases, speak truth to power. This process inevitably constitutes “punching up”. This means targeting those with more privilege and a higher status in society than the satirist.</p>
<p>However, in recent years the royals have been rebranded as vulnerable, despite their enormous privilege. This change might have significant consequences for the art of satire.</p>
<h2>Punching up</h2>
<p>The royal family’s position at the top of British society makes them an obvious satirical target. Perceptions of the royal family as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/britain-royal-family-prince-charles-monarchy">antiquated and politically redundant</a>, despite their immense fortune and revered status, are fertile material for satirists seeking to lampoon ridiculousness and hypocrisy.</p>
<p>For as long as the royals were seen as aloof, untroubled and of a different breed from the commoners over whom they ruled, satirists haven’t needed to concern themselves with questions about the harm such satire might do to the royal family as “real” people.</p>
<p>In fact in the 18th century, when satire of the royals was at its most scathing, scandalous and scatological (there was a lot of poo involved), it drew little attention from the monarchy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Cartoon depicting a king receiving news on the toilet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/422194/original/file-20210920-17-5g7ro5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taking_physick_-_-_or_-_the_news_of_shooting_the_King_of_Sweden!_by_James_Gillray.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During this period, caricaturist James Gillray would regularly produce images of George III and his wife defecating. He also drew Queen Charlotte <a href="https://media.britishmuseum.org/media/Repository/Documents/2014_9/29_15/0c0e95b2_b364_451c_a4b6_a3b500fdc91a/mid_00138580_001.jpg">haggard and naked</a>, and their son George IV as a sexually ravenous libertine <a href="http://www.tara.tcd.ie/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2262/10007/ROB1016.JPG?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">emerging from beneath a woman’s skirts</a>. Nevertheless, James Gillray was still granted a government pension. </p>
<p>The monarchy’s tolerance of such satire spoke to their strength. They were so secure in their position of power that they were untroubled by cheap jokes and toilet humour. There are even cases where the monarchy <a href="https://theconversation.com/spitting-image-a-warning-from-the-golden-age-of-satire-124546">directly benefited from such satirical abuses</a>.</p>
<h2>Royal targets or real people?</h2>
<p>Since the 18th century, royal satire has broadly shifted from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Juvenalian-satire">Juvenalian mode</a> (satire that is bitter, ironic, contemptuous, relentlessly extreme in its censure) to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Horatian-satire">Horatian</a> (satire that is amused, tolerant and wry). </p>
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</figure>
<p>The latter is well exemplified by Harry Enfield’s The Windsors, which pokes gentle fun at royals, who are presented as dim-witted and detached, but ultimately harmless. It is to this Horatian tradition that The Prince is most openly indebted, with the show’s creator, Gary Janetti, even claiming that the show “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/30/the-prince-royal-hbo-series-backlash/">is meant with affection</a>”.</p>
<p>Though royal satire has become less scathing over time, it seems that audiences and critics have become more sensitive to jibes at this ruling elite, as the reception to The Prince demonstrates. </p>
<p>In some areas of the media, there is great concern that making fun of the monarchy might cause irreparable damage – that satire is in some way harmful to great tradition. More than anything, this perhaps speaks to the monarchy’s existential precarity when a light-hearted adult cartoon causes more concern to the crown than images of defecation, nudity and sexual promiscuity did 200 years ago.</p>
<p>The aspect of The Prince that has drawn the most fire is the decision to centre events around young Prince George, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9851387/Animated-satire-Prince-criticised-mocking-Duke-Edinburgh.html">with the Daily Mail</a> suggesting that children should be off-limits for satire.</p>
<p>Whether you agree, however, depends on whether you view George as the target of the show’s satire or its vehicle. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>There is a rich tradition of child characters being used in satirical fiction to draw attention to the hypocrisies, inconsistencies and contradictions of the adult world. For example, Evelyn Waugh’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/571/57153/a-handful-of-dust/9780241341100.html">A Handful of Dust</a> (1934) features a child who is able to decode the true meaning behind the words of adults and immediately shares them in entertainingly blunt statements. A more recent example is Family Guy’s precocious Stewie Griffin – a character The Prince’s young George seems, in many ways, to recall.</p>
<p>The biggest problem faced by The Prince is that many members of the royal family no longer present themselves as aloof, but have instead come to be understood in language associated with popular cultural discussions, such as those surrounding racism and mental health. </p>
<p>Prince William and Prince Harry have both spoken openly about the loss of their mother, Diana and the <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/prince-harry-on-his-mental-health-struggles-and-processing-his-mothers-death">effect this had on their mental health</a>. Harry and Meghan’s interview with <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/oprah-winfrey-interviews-meghan-markle-prince-harry/">Oprah Winfrey</a> in March 2021 touched on questions of race, gender and suicidal thoughts. </p>
<p>Both Princes have also been involved with charities <a href="https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/campaigns/heads-together/#:%7E:text=Led%20by%20the%20Duke%20and,important%20conversations%20about%20mental%20health">raising awareness of mental health</a>. When younger members of the royal family, at least, become humanised in this way, satire on the institution as a whole becomes more complex. It might seem that the more the family appears to be made up of “real people”, the more distasteful satire directed at them appears to some commentators.</p>
<p>Given this new climate, where those figures at the top of society are able to position themselves as vulnerable, “punching up” is no longer as easy to justify.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Royal satire has softened over the last 300 years, but audiences are more sensitive to barbs against the institution.
Adam J Smith, Senior Lecturer in 18th-century Literature, York St John University
Jo Waugh, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, York St John University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/148924
2020-11-09T14:52:41Z
2020-11-09T14:52:41Z
How memes in the DRC allow people to laugh at those in power – and themselves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367996/original/file-20201106-13-bfl1f5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Those dressing in designer labels can be the subject of memes in the DRC.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Per-Anders Pettersson/Corbis News via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Memes have become expressions of contemporary culture worldwide, as people document their daily lives through images. The world of <a href="https://twitter.com/africamemes?lang=en">memes</a> – the humorous images paired with text that mutate and spread rapidly, depending on how funny they are – remind us that humour is also contagious. </p>
<p><a href="https://africacartoons.com/cartoonists/map/drc/">Cartoonists</a> in Africa have also historically engaged their readers through the use of humour. Their expressions become fodder for conversations in public spaces like crowded buses and bars. In the colonial era, cartoons and <a href="https://wallach.columbia.edu/exhibitions/congo-chronicle-patrice-lumumba-urban-art">popular paintings</a> were <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=DDtcPGvlRlIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">instrumental</a> in the <a href="https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1091429">struggle</a> for independence in many African countries. </p>
<p>In postcolonial settings they <a href="https://www.cnbcafrica.com/international/2018/12/28/drcs-best-known-political-cartoonist-making-light-of-grim-realities-shares-his-election-hopes/">continue</a> to be mediums that covertly – and sometimes explicitly – mock and challenge abuses of power. </p>
<p>There’s some continuity when comparing memes to cartoons. But the anonymity offered by the virtual quality of meme circulation allows for a different kind of participation. </p>
<p>Photoshopped images of politicians in compromising situations – being caught with their pants down – offer a carnivalesque commentary on the arbitrariness of power. These images galvanise people to laugh at those in power, but also those who are subjected to it.</p>
<p>There are an estimated <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-in-middle-africa-86865634?qid=8111df47-9748-4099-9ea7-6b54cbe07aba&v=&b=&from_search=1">5.3 million</a> active internet users in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But access to technology is limited to people with the financial means. Because censorship in the country is <a href="https://www.indexoncensorship.org/tag/democratic-republic-of-congo/">rife</a>, the online sphere, with its anonymity, provides a platform through which power can be critiqued. The economy of circulating images represents a threat to a government that often shuts off the internet during electoral periods.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sits at a desk that's covered in hand drawn cartoons, touching one up on a computer screen in front of him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/367952/original/file-20201106-21-5wpu7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cartoons paved the way for memes - like those of Congolese cartoonist Kash, seen here in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">JUNIOR D.KANNAH/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There has been an increase in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/action/doSearch?AllField=memes">academic interest</a> about circulating digital content. But there’s been virtually no research exploring memes and other viral media in Africa. Beginning in 2017, we began <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02560046.2020.1753089">researching</a> memes and their circulation in the DRC’s capital city, Kinshasa. </p>
<p>This research has provided some insights into the cultural characteristics of digital images in the DRC. And also how they relate to larger anxieties about social change and foreign interventions and new forms of <a href="https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-democratic-republic-of-the-congo">online connection</a>. </p>
<h2>Pondu, Versace and the Chinese</h2>
<p>In many of the memes we collected there was a sense of self-reflexive laughter, an ironic self-mockery, that characterised the images. For example, one meme presents an image of Victor Hugo, a 19th century French author, superimposed on an image of a plate of <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/congo/articles/a-brief-history-of-pondu-the-republic-of-congos-favourite-delicacy/">pondu</a>, a Congolese national dish, with a quote supposedly from Hugo himself: “A real woman knows how to cook Pondu.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ08NRdAIsm","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Another meme depicts a man in head to toe Versace print and a trolley stacked with luggage emblazoned with the luxury fashion brand logo. The caption: “When your Congolese uncle comes to visit for a week.” These images appeal to people living at home and abroad as they express cultural affinities through images (one might say caricatures) of Congolese culture. This one holds up the stereotype of Congolese people as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54323473">obsessed with fashion</a>.</p>
<p>There is a profusion of images depicting Chinese people. These range from light-hearted provocations about cultural stereotypes to some that carry more serious allegations of <a href="https://www.gbreports.com/article/the-chinese-power-grab-in-the-drc">abuse of power</a>. One meme we collected presents a Chinese-owned shop in the DRC featuring a mannequin mimicking a stereotypical Congolese silhouette. Others are suggestive of more serious racial stereotypes. For instance, a Chinese street-food vendor selling grilled rats is ridiculed in one meme. It bears the inscription, “Have you eaten yet?” </p>
<p>Digital content and other oral channels like rumours can become intertwined, and feed one another, which presents a potential danger. For instance, the image of a Chinese woman selling grilled rats might be read as legitimate news rather than a playful jab. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"818493873517428737"}"></div></p>
<p>Images might be used to manipulate people’s attitudes, especially if people are not aware of the complexities of internet content production. This points to the importance of the promotion of internet literacy in the country. </p>
<h2>Technological anxieties</h2>
<p>There are growing assumptions that memes and viral content can alter opinions in a manner that many characterise as manipulation. New psychology <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429492303">studies</a> have raised questions about the agency of the memetic receiver. They suggest that exposure to conspiracy theories is sometimes enough to significantly influence one’s belief. Take the proliferation of memes circulating across Africa about Chinese people. Many are intended to be comical, but others become vehicles of false information that can affect people’s perceptions. </p>
<p>Biological viruses can contaminate, but technology also becomes a means through which contamination can occur. Local belief systems of virality can converge with the notion that images themselves can be potentially virulent, infecting people’s minds on a literal level. For instance, it is not uncommon for a Congolese person to say, “Do not infect my phone with that video of yours. I do not want to be contaminated by those images.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-new-media-platforms-have-become-powerful-across-africa-107294">How new media platforms have become powerful across Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This particular statement speaks not as much to a digital virus as to beliefs about the power of images themselves. Given the threat of Ebola outbreaks, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, language relating to contamination is particularly salient. </p>
<p>As more people, technology and ideas continue to circulate, anxieties about the proximity of others will continue to make themselves visible through the multiplication of narratives. These narratives now also appear in the memes that people make, circulate and laugh at. </p>
<p>It’s undeniable that the ambiguity of digital technology contributes to our relationships with others. Concerns over contamination, whether cultural or biological, will continue to breed and be fed by the digital domain, contributing to ambivalence towards structural forces circulating in the world. </p>
<p>As the technology used to access and create internet content becomes increasingly available to Congolese people, locally produced content will inevitably continue to multiply and interact with global trends as well as to critique the wider political sphere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Nicole Braun receives funding from the Swiss National Foundation (SNF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Humour is a way for Congolese internet users to prod at cultural traits and political developments – despite censorship being rife.
Lesley Nicole Braun, Senior lecturer, University of Basel
Ribio Nzeza Bunketi Buse, Associate Professor, University of Kinshasa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/131202
2020-02-12T19:13:35Z
2020-02-12T19:13:35Z
Looking on the bright side, The Leunig Fragments film skips dark truths
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314166/original/file-20200207-27533-1g3tuvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C1888%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Madman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cartoonist’s task is to give voice to ideas and sentiments that are repressed in culture. For Michael Leunig, it was an odd poetic impulse – a strand of lyricism, which Australians probably never suspected they possessed – that gave rise to his iconic work. According to the National Trust, he is an <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v1293">Australian National Living Treasure</a>. </p>
<p>As the subject of Kasimir Burgess’s documentary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8175048/">The Leunig Fragments</a>, Leunig is an oddly esoteric figure.</p>
<p>He is pictured sipping tea from a pristine white Ikea cup, curled up foetal-like on a couch, staring wide-eyed at the sky, or out across the misty water; dressed like a solitary trainspotter in a dark anorak and felt scarf, strangely child-like, but with lots of wild grey hair.</p>
<p>Leunig is best known for his daily newspaper cartoons featuring the whimsical characters Vasco Pyjama and Mr Curly. Together with his signature images of the duck, the teapot, an odd star or waning moon, they have supported his commentary on Australia’s political, social and emotional life for decades. </p>
<p>Audiences will also know Leunig for his paintings and poetry, but more so for the “Leunig industry”, the dozens of newspaper lift outs, posters and calendars, not to mention mugs, aprons, totes, tea towels and assorted kitsch synonymous with Australian popular culture through the 1980s and 90s.</p>
<p>For all its ubiquity, Leunig’s whimsy can be deceptively cutting, or, as Philip Adams puts it, “weaponised”.</p>
<p>The edge manifests itself in the disturbing use of light, dark, wings, halos, and clouds — let’s face it, this is an oddly religious mythos for a newspaper cartoonist (he once told Andrew Denton he liked the sound of the word, “God”) – and it hints at Leunig’s darker, more strident and uncomfortable themes.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The film covers Michael Leunig’s childhood but doesn’t delve into his controversies.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A lost boy</h2>
<p>Born in Footscray in Melbourne’s inner west, Leunig was the son of an abattoir worker and the second eldest of five children. He became estranged from both his parents and siblings. He tells Burgess he never attended his parents’ funerals; never visited their graves; and doesn’t know where they’re buried. He doesn’t mention his sister, feminist cartoonist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/24/michael-leunigs-artist-sister-returns-fire-over-cartoon-of-young-mother-on-phone">Mary Leunig</a>, once in the course of Burgess’ film.</p>
<p>Burgess documentary storytelling is restrained and unobtrusive.
He doesn’t impose a narrative, but, as his title suggests, lets the “fragments” tell the story. Shaped by image, soundtrack and theme, the result feels more like a musical score than conventional filmic story telling. It stumbles into the terrain of the literal only once or twice. </p>
<p>There’s also a layer of self-reflectivity that pulls the narrative together, giving context through the elements of docudrama that are woven into the film – the auditioning of a child actor to play Leunig as a boy is priceless; also conspicuous is the visual motif of the English teacher; a female muse from Leunig’s childhood that he seems to have carried with him throughout his life.</p>
<p>But at the end of it all, Leunig the man remains a mystery, which, I suspect is precisely Burgess’ point.</p>
<h2>Sour tastes</h2>
<p>Leunig’s career is not without controversy; a fact this documentary rather evades.</p>
<p>Leunig’s parody of John Howard as the prime minister who couldn’t stoop lower than he had, “No Disrespect Intended, however … ”, which was notoriously dropped from the Sydney Morning Herald, doesn’t appear. Nor does the controversy that swirled around the cartoons about the occupation of the Gaza. </p>
<p>His condemnation of the War on Terror is featured but treated poetically rather than specifically, or politically.</p>
<p>Worryingly, Leunig’s recurrent blasts at women he portrays as selfish or neglectful float across the screen and are seldom contextualised or even questioned. </p>
<p>After all, Leunig is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-24/leunig-cartoon-criticising-mother-use-of-instagram-sparks-debate/11634522">well known</a> for his anti-feminism: his opposition to childcare services for women who need to work to support their families, the outrageous irresponsibility of his anti-vaxx cartoons also aimed at mothers, his mindless tirades against young women who, he alleges, love their <a href="https://www.leunig.com.au/curly-world/insight-november-2019">digital devices</a> more than they love their babies. </p>
<p>Leunig’s short animation <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znWdpx5W-e0">Dripping Tap</a>, for example, runs almost full length in this documentary. In this video a husband, unable to sleep, tells his wife about the hopes and dreams and life and romance that is leaking out of his heart and into the mattress. Leunig’s punchline, delivered by the wife, is not only unkind, it is fundamentally chauvinist. “No, it’s definitely the cold tap in the laundry” is predicated on the assumption that women – unlike men – have no hopes or dreams or poetry, just domestic concerns.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/znWdpx5W-e0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘No, it’s definitely the cold tap in the laundry.’ Leunig’s women are tethered to the domestic.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women, like the figure of the teacher muse in this film, are just there to support men. </p>
<p>This documentary is beautiful, but it’s also more than a little deceptive in the way that it skates seamlessly across the surface of Leunig’s thoughts. Burgess should have dug a little deeper, down into the dark.</p>
<p><em>The Leunig Fragments opens in cinemas from February 13.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A new film uses pastiche to explore the whimsical world of cartoonist Michael Leunig - but the man himself gives little away and the film skates over his curlier controversies.
Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118754
2019-06-16T20:00:37Z
2019-06-16T20:00:37Z
The New York Times ends daily political cartoons, but it’s not the death of the art form
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279500/original/file-20190614-158949-1ya6vow.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1449%2C0%2C2544%2C2000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The New York Times decision to end daily political cartoons in its international edition has led to predictions of the death of cartooning. But the decision actually reflects an increasingly globalised, online industry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wes Mountain/Baiducao/Carlos Latuff/David Pope/First Dog/David Rowe/Jon Kudelka/Glen Le Lievre/Rebel Pepper/António Moreira Antunes/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/business/international-new-york-times-political-cartoons.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCartoons%20and%20Cartoonists&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection">has announced</a> it will no longer be running daily political cartoons in its international edition, amid a continuing controversy over anti-Semitism in its pages. This brings the international paper in line with the domestic edition, which stopped featuring daily political cartoons <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/12/new-york-times-cartoonists-ban-antisemitism">several years ago</a>.</p>
<p>It follows an earlier decision to end syndicated cartooning (“syndicates” represent collectives of cartoonists, looking to have work placed in a variety of publications). The Times said that a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ny-times-deeply-sorry-for-anti-semitic-cartoon-of-netanyahu-and-trump/">“faulty process” and lack of oversight</a> led to a syndicated cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump (which was condemned by many as anti-Semitic) slipping through the net on April 25.</p>
<p>The decision has caused international consternation and prompted doom-laden predictions about the death of cartooning, or even of free speech itself. The paper’s former in-house cartoonists – Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song – have <a href="https://www.chappatte.com/en/the-end-of-political-cartoons-at-the-new-york-times/">taken to Twitter and the web</a> to defend their careers and their profession.</p>
<p>But this decision should be seen less an overreaction by a newspaper frightened of (of all things) bad press, than a wake-up call. It’s a moment to acknowledge the new realities of cartooning, globally. As The Times’ editors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/business/international-new-york-times-political-cartoons.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCartoons%20and%20Cartoonists&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection">have asserted</a>, this has been a long time coming. </p>
<p>Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for at least a decade. The hallowed cartooning traditions of the 20th century cannot continue without facing up to fundamental changes in the industry. Although this decision doesn’t spell the end of cartooning as we know it, this may very well be a tipping point for the global cartooning industry.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279454/original/file-20190614-32347-1v30n4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Headquarters of New York Times, New York 2014. The newspaper’s editors recently announced they will no longer publish daily political cartoons in the international edition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>A borderless world</h2>
<p>Chappatte <a href="https://www.chappatte.com/en/the-end-of-political-cartoons-at-the-new-york-times/">has said</a>: “Cartoons can jump over borders.” But I’d go further: for cartoons, there are no longer any borders. There haven’t been for about a decade or so. And cartoonists have to understand that what they produce for one set of readers in one particular context will inevitably now be seen by people far away, with a very different set of views.</p>
<p>Remember the 2005 controversy over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten? Initial low-level grumbling soon <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/feb/05/pressandpublishing.religion">turned into worldwide outrage</a>. Of course, it took a full decade for the worst reaction to manifest itself.</p>
<p>The French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo – which had not only reprinted the original Danish cartoons, but continued to print <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/07/charlie-hebdo-satire-intimidation-analysis">deliberately offensive anti-Islamic cartoons</a> in subsequent years – was firebombed in 2011, and then the unthinkable: the shootings at the magazine’s offices in January 2015. </p>
<p>And Australia cannot stand aloof. Remember <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-11/cartoonist-mark-knight-defends-serena-williams-depiction/10230044">Mark Knight’s caricature of Serena Williams from 2018</a>? The cartoon dropped like a stone until picked up by J.K. Rowling, and American readers in particular. The global reach of the Murdoch press ensured it would become a battleground for issues of press freedom versus “political correctness”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279478/original/file-20190614-158925-5fmja9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian cartoonist Mark Knight with his prize winning cartoon at the National Museum in Canberra in 2004. Knight was at the centre of a controversy for his depiction of Serena Williams in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/295964833394851840?lang=en">Rupert Murdoch himself took to Twitter in 2012</a> to defend the London-based Sunday Times after a Gerald Scarfe cartoon depicted Netanyahu building a wall with the bodies of Palestinians (<em>plus ça change</em>…?). <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/leunig-your-provocative-use-of-nazi-analogies-is-so-tiresome-20121213-2bcef.html">Michael Leunig weighed in</a>, claiming the need for cartoonists to “give balance”, rather than present a balanced opinion; reworking Martin Niemöller’s “first they came” in controversial style. Leunig himself <a href="https://www.academia.edu/17773536/Crossing_the_Line_Offensive_and_Controversial_Cartoons_in_the_21st_Century_-_The_View_from_Australia">had a cartoon in 2002 refused</a> on the basis of likely backlash from the Jewish community. </p>
<p>The point is that globalisation and information technology have changed the business of cartooning. Cartoonists wedded to the old-school, in-house ways of the 20th century can throw tantrums about free speech as much as they like. If they do not recognise the way the world has changed – and is changing – then they will be left behind as their profession moves forward. </p>
<p>History is not on their side. Just as 18th-century copperplate engravings were replaced by lithograph prints, and standalone caricatures were replaced by cartoons in 19th-century humour magazines, and they in turn by 20th-century newspaper cartoons, the web cartoon has well and truly arrived in the 21st century.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-political-cartooning-the-end-of-an-era-81680">Friday essay: political cartooning – the end of an era</a>
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</em>
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<p>A recent example of a web-based cartoonist is Badiucao, the Chinese-Australian artist who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-04/badiucao-tiananmen-square-china-artist-takes-off-mask/11173530">instigated the global movement to recreate the famous “tank man” image</a> in memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre.</p>
<p>So, although a blow to an older way of doing things, The New York Times decision won’t halt the ever-greater expansion of cartooning in its online form. The Times hasn’t really been known for its cartoon content (and actually been quite dismissive of the artform, historically).</p>
<p>The Portuguese anti-Netanyahu cartoonist – António Moreira Antunes – doesn’t even work for the Times. He is one of an army of cartoonists who work without borders, without much of the self-censorship that has always characterised the profession, and without the limitations of the past. </p>
<p>That comes at a cost: job security, a greater reliance on volunteer labour, and a decline in professionalism. But it’s where the future lies.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, the syndication that has been such a part of US cartooning culture for more than a century may provide a model for the future of the profession. The great press barons of the early 20th century – Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst (“Citizen Kane”) – were among the pioneers. </p>
<p>Rather than individual papers employing in-house staff cartoonists, the syndicate model looks remarkably like the “gig” economy of freelancers and short-term contracts. The Times has dealt with CartoonArts International – founded in 1978 – for many years. By divesting itself of that relationship, it may actually be taking a backward step. </p>
<p>But beyond this one paper, cartooning will continue. Talented artists will continue to create brilliant comments on the news of the day; less talented amateurs can always knock up a truly witty meme. Check your Facebook or Twitter feed – there’s more cartooning happening now than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Scully is an employee of the University of New England (UNE); receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC); and is an associate member of the Australian Cartoonists Association (ACA). His views do not reflect those of the UNE, ARC, or ACA.</span></em></p>
A New York Times decision has led to predictions of the death of cartooning. But rather than perishing, is the global art form just feeling the full force of technological and workplace change?
Richard Scully, Associate Professor of Modern European History, University of New England
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104778
2018-10-23T14:26:11Z
2018-10-23T14:26:11Z
Cartoonists can be an important voice of dissent: but they can also be divisive
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241802/original/file-20181023-169807-1x58xy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Censorship has been in the news again following Rwanda passing a new law.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rwanda <a href="http://www.therwandan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-New-Rwanda-Penal-Code.pdf">has introduced</a> legislation which criminalises the public humiliation or insult – through gestures, writings or cartoons – of national authorities, public service officials or foreign state and international organisation representatives. This is a clear restriction to the freedom of political and editorial cartoonists. </p>
<p>Political cartoons are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20407211.2010.10530755?needAccess=true">powerful spaces</a> in which negotiations of power and resistance are expressed. They provide insights into power relations, key social issues and events. By mocking or ridiculing the excesses and failings of elites, cartoonists can hold leaders accountable.</p>
<p>While the intent – and reception – of cartoons can mobilise critiques of leaders and excesses of power, they can also be divisive and regressive. This is particularly true when cartoons fail to consider local history, cultural norms, and cultural or religious difference. Recent years have witnessed many of these controversies. These include the publication of editorial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11341599/Prophet-Muhammad-cartoons-controversy-timeline.html">Danish newspaper</a> Jyllands-Posten which eventually led to protests around the world, including violent demonstrations and riots in some Muslim countries. Or the reaction by <a href="https://www.news24.com/Drum/Archive/the-ancwl-calls-on-zapiro-to-apologise-to-women-for-his-latest-insensitive-cartoon-20170728">women’s groups</a> to South African cartoonist Zapiro’s depictions of former South African President Jacob Zuma “preparing to rape” the “Lady of Justice”. They said it was insensitive in a country where rape is a daily occurrence. </p>
<p>Rwanda has huge sensitivities when it comes to political cartoons. Prior to the 1994 genocide, when <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13431486">an estimated</a> 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days, a <a href="http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2016/10/cartooning-in-rwanda.html">cartoon strip</a> in the Kangura newspaper was seen as a propaganda tool to promote division and hostility. This has meant that in recent years, cartoonists <a href="http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2016/10/cartooning-in-rwanda.html">remain cautious</a> of crossing official and unofficial lines when covering political issues. </p>
<p>While all journalists try to balance tensions between free speech and causing division, this is <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2006/10/196382-cartoonists-play-large-role-forming-public-opinion-can-help-promote-peace-annan">particularly</a> fraught for cartoonists. Their work can challenge us to question ourselves, provoke empathy for others and often relies on an emotional reaction – one not always intended to elicit laughter – to convey their argument. </p>
<h2>Role of political cartoons</h2>
<p>Political and editorial cartoons are a key indicator of the democratic health of a country. They are the “canary in the coal mine”, providing a public display of opposition and dissent. They use a unique art to raise questions and speak a truth to power in ways denied to others. In this role, political cartoonists <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/20407211.2010.10530755">highlight</a> abuses and excesses of power, and hold governments and leaders accountable.</p>
<p>Witness, for instance, South African cartoonist Zapiro’s <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/060905indep">many depictions</a> of former President Zuma with a shower faucet attached to his head. These were drawn in the aftermath of Zuma’s rape acquittal. During his court case, Zuma <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/060511mg">admitted</a> he showered after having unprotected sex as a means to prevent the spread of HIV. Long after the trial, the cartoon continued to act as constant reminder of the rape case, a motif the cartoonist used to question the legitimacy of Zuma’s leadership. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1748048507076577">we see</a> heads of state being ridiculed by being compared to animals: US President George W Bush as an ape, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair as a poodle, former Zimbabwean elites as snakes. All these images raised questions about the credibility of powerful office-holders. </p>
<h2>Control</h2>
<p>Restricting and intimidating political cartoonists is often a key part of broader efforts to curtail press freedoms and free speech. </p>
<p>As elites seek to maintain control, political cartoonists <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/cartooning-is-no-job-for-cowards">face threats</a> and intimidation for their work. In recent years, we <a href="https://cpj.org/reports/2015/05/drawing-the-line-cartoonists-under-threat-free-expression-zunar-charlie-hebdo.php">have seen</a> court cases against cartoonists all over the world, including in Malaysia, South Africa, Turkey, and Serbia. In the US contracts have been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/06/15/an-american-editorial-cartoonist-has-been-fired-for-skewering-trump-he-likely-wont-be-the-last/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.39e2db3996a9">terminated</a> amid suspicions of political influence.</p>
<p>In the case of Rwanda, the media landscape is marked by restrictions on press freedoms and various forms of censorship. It is classified by the Freedom in the <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2017">World report</a> as “not free”, alongside countries including Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela. Reporters without Borders <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2018#">ranks</a> Rwanda as 156th in the world for Press Freedoms, comparable with the Democratic Republic of Congo. </p>
<p>But the country’s context is important, the memory of the 1994 genocide remains strong and is ingrained in the national psyche. </p>
<p>Prior to and during the genocide, <a href="http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2016/10/cartooning-in-rwanda.html">sections</a> of the print and broadcast media were pivotal in <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20100423-atrauss-rtlm-radio-hate.pdf">promoting</a> and <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13457754/RwandaDYD.pdf?sequence=1">deepening</a> ethnic division and hostility. Central to such divisive tactics was the presentation of sections of the population as sub-human – as cockroaches – who needed to be exterminated. </p>
<p>It is therefore understandable that, as the country rebuilds, sensitivities remain around representation of individuals or groups which humiliate or degrade them.</p>
<h2>Fine line</h2>
<p>The critical voice of the political cartoonist can provide a vital safety valve for a society. They can give expression to frustrations, grievances and opposition. But cartoonists need to remain sensitive to local political and social histories.</p>
<p>It’s a fine line between balancing the need to protect free speech and these concerns. Political cartoonists need to continue to speak truth to power, but in so doing must ensure they do not cause division and hostility which may threaten the most fundamental of rights – the right to life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Hammett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Political and editorial cartoons are a key indicator of the democratic health of a country - but they can also be regressive.
Daniel Hammett, Lecturer in Development and Political Geography, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88977
2017-12-14T13:57:54Z
2017-12-14T13:57:54Z
John Leech: the cartoonist who gave us Christmas past
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199220/original/file-20171214-27555-jhd9il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Leech via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scrooge sits by the fire, warming his hands on its meagre heat. To his left is the ghost of Jacob Marley, the chains that encircle him a testament to his life of cold-hearted avarice. Between them is a candle – its cold, cruel light illuminating one of the best-known and most beloved stories of its (and our) time: Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.</p>
<p>The artist who illustrated the scene was John Leech. A huge star in his time, Leech’s fame has receded like many of his Victorian contemporaries. But <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/man-invented-christmas-review-fanciful-festive-fluff-twitchy/">a new film</a> about the writing of Dickens’ masterpiece, which features Simon Callow as the cartoonist and book illustrator, has brought Leech back like a ghost of cartoons past.</p>
<p>Although Dickens is often credited with inventing the modern idea of Christmas, Leech should certainly take some of the credit (or blame). It was A Christmas Carol, and its vivid illustrations, which cemented in the public’s mind the idea that it was wrong to work on Christmas Day – something that lead to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13217242">Bank Holidays Act</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c5T4ExirAW4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>At the time, Dickens was still in his early 30s and was in a bit of an early-career slump. His previous novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, had not been the success to which Dickens had become accustomed. Dickens needed a hit. With this in mind, he knew the choice of illustrator would be a key factor in its popularity. It was little surprise that he turned to Leech.</p>
<p>Born in 1817, John Leech was already being called a genius <a href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/specialcollections/2017/06/05/the-schoolboy-sketches-of-john-leech/">at an early age</a>. It was with the new publication, <a href="https://www.punch.co.uk/about/index">Punch magazine</a>, that he found his spiritual home. Launched in 1841, the magazine quickly shook off pretensions to radicalism and found its niche in a more respectable form. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=696&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199233/original/file-20171214-27580-xk942f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frontispiece of A Christmas Carol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Leech</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leech became a significant figure in Victorian society and culture, in some ways embodying the recent shift in taste in caricatures and journalism in general. The previous generation of visual satirists, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoon">personified by James Gillray</a>, delighted in grotesque, scurrilous and often scatological illustrations, which even today can shock in the ferocity of their attacks on public figures. </p>
<p>Leech’s work, along with that of his fellow Punch artists, was gentler and designed not to offend the sensibilities of the magazine’s readers. That is not to say his work was toothless – far from it – but his targets were less likely to be individuals and more likely to be issues such as poverty. It was probably this element of his work that attracted Dickens.</p>
<p>As strange as it now may seem, Dickens’ publishers were less than enthusiastic. The novelist <a href="https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/what-the-insane-circumstances-under-which-dickens-wrote-a-christmas-carol-reveal-about-money-debt-and-success-20171214">was in debt</a> and they didn’t see A Christmas Carol <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-edition-of-a-christmas-carol#">as the way to turn this situation around</a>. But Dickens persevered and with John Leech crafted a tale that more than made up in impact what it lacked in length.</p>
<h2>Popular imagination</h2>
<p>Leech can lay claim to have drawn the <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/leech/leech.html">world’s first political cartoon</a>. In 1843 – the very same year that Dickens published his Christmas classic – an exhibition of frescos was being held at Westminster, something that Punch thought inappropriate when many who were living in the same district were starving. </p>
<p>The exhibition featured cartoons in the <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/daniel-maclise-what-is-a-cartoon">original sense of the word</a> – artists’ preliminary drawings – and was considered a worthy subject of attack by the magazine. Leech, then just 25, drew Substance and Shadow under the heading Cartoon No. 1. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199221/original/file-20171214-27597-1k1f02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leech’s Substance and Shadow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Punch magazine via The Victorian Web</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is a striking image, juxtaposing the grand setting of Westminster Hall with the dishevelled poor looking forlornly on. There is a definite feel of Dickens’ abhorrence to social injustice about this, and much of Leech’s later work. Soon, after all, the illustrations in Punch were being called cartoons, and their artists cartoonists.</p>
<p>Leech went on to further success and immense popularity. His <a href="http://www.john-leech-archive.org.uk/1856/crimean-war-1.htm">work on the Crimean War</a> remains a classic of political cartooning – it not only reflected, but actually influenced the news agenda; his friend, the novelist William Makepiece Thackeray <a href="https://archive.org/stream/johnleechartisth00kittiala/johnleechartisth00kittiala_djvu.txt">going so far as to claim </a> that the “popularity of Punch is perhaps owning more to John Leech that to any other man”. He could count among his admirers the likes of the artist <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sir-john-everett-millais-bt-379">John Everett Millais</a> and the prime minister, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/gladstone_william_ewart.shtml">William Gladstone</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199005/original/file-20171213-27580-pn49te.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Steve Bell of his day: John Leech.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More than 20 years after his death at just 47 in 1864, a collection of his work, <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/pictures-of-life-and-character-from-the-collection-of-mr-punch-1887/">Sketches of Life and Character</a>, sold 140,000 copies. Perhaps most significantly, it <a href="http://illustrationchronicles.com/How-Punch-Magazine-Changed-Everything">has been claimed</a> that it was Leech “who made the public look first at the pictures” – something that remains true today for cartoonists as diverse as The Guardian’s Steve Bell and the Daily Telegraph’s Matt.</p>
<p>While many other artists have illustrated editions of A Christmas Carol over the years, Leech’s work on the original has given him the right to claim that it was not just Dickens who was the man who invented Christmas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Whitworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The artist who illustrated A Christmas Carol was one of the best-known satirists of his time.
James Whitworth, PhD Researcher in Newspaper and Magazine Cartoons & Professional Cartoonist., University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81680
2017-08-10T20:08:59Z
2017-08-10T20:08:59Z
Friday essay: political cartooning – the end of an era
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181308/original/file-20170808-27840-7nxjga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A wonderful evocation of the horrors of last year's long election campaign by David Rowe in the Australian Financial Review. Amid industry turmoil, newspaper cartooning is increasingly becoming a niche activity.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>We started collecting cartoons in the last days of the Keating supremacy. We used them to chronicle how the wheels fell off during the 1996 election campaign and that serial failure John Howard (once written off in a Bulletin headline as “Mr Eighteen Percent. Why does this man bother?”) won in a landslide. </p>
<p>Howard found that the times did indeed now suit him, and he swept aside Keating’s “Big Picture” as <a href="http://nicholsoncartoons.com.au/?s=Paul+Keating+and+John+Howard">Peter Nicholson</a> so poignantly captured while asking what might be its replacement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181151/original/file-20170807-16718-1xf51i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Nicholson, The Australian, 9 March 1996.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After a slow start, PM Howard captured the nation’s mood for a decade, and the cartoonists chronicled it all with their customary wit and insight. His demise was multifaceted but Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight’s memorable cartoon reminds us of Melbourne Cup day early on in campaign 2007, when he depicted the once invincible PM reduced to a poo sweeper, courtesy of the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise interest rates.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181301/original/file-20170807-25514-11nvczo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Knight’s 2007 cartoon (with Howard on the right).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Back in the 1990s, writing about cartoons involved a budget for buying newspapers, scissors, and a good spatial memory. It also involved proud and liberal use of the phrase “our great black-and-white art tradition”. Metropolitan and national newspapers were big, prosperous things, only just beginning to come to terms with colour.</p>
<p>The house cartoonists (there were often several) were central to their paper’s ethos, often “the most read thing in the paper”. We never had any real empirical evidence for “the most read” assertion, but we made it often and no one ever demurred. Political cartoons were at the centre of a clearly defined media landscape.</p>
<p>When Howard defeated Keating, television set the daily political agenda, but the longer threads of debate were dominated by newspapers, especially the opinion-rich broadsheets. One of Howard’s most effective innovations was to use talkback radio to avoid the filter of “elite” hostility he perceived as dominating newspapers and the ABC, but the internet was a fringe space, not yet more significant than community radio. The opinion pages of newspapers were the dominant forum for serious political discussion, and at their heart was the visual terrorism of cartoons and illustrations – attracting eyes, conflating issues, and distilling images of politicians and their policies. </p>
<p>Every day they provided comic commentary on the politicians we elect to rule us, and often they managed darker and more serious satire. The engagement was robust and sustained – for example, Bill Leak’s response to the GST policy that Howard took to the 1998 election was to draw him with 10% more lip, and that is largely how many remember him. Great comic artists spoke in sometimes savage shorthand to the major issues of the day, in the major crucible where those issues were thrashed out. They were uniformly powerful and humane in their response to the Howard Government’s asylum seeker policies, for example.</p>
<p>The cartoonists doing the distilling were Tandberg, Leunig, Mitchell, Coopes, Alston, Leak, Petty, Cooke, Spooner, Brown, Nicholson, Wilcox, Rowe, Knight, Tanner, Pryor, Moir, Leahy, Atchison. It was a stable list then, and changed only incrementally until just recently.</p>
<h2>The last hurrah</h2>
<p>For the 2016 campaign, painful in so many ways, was also the last hurrah for four great cartoonists of our era. Bruce Petty, John Spooner and Peter Nicholson retired from regular cartooning and earlier this year, Bill Leak died suddenly. We write, therefore, in long-term appreciation of the wit they have brought to our public life. We also must comment on how radically the media landscape has changed around them.</p>
<p>Retirements and even death are in the natural order of things, and all these men leave substantial bodies of work. What makes their departures epochal is the fact that none has been fully replaced at their newspapers. They certainly haven’t been replaced by the group of female cartoonists whose eventual appearance we used to predict when asked “what about the women?” It’s a good question but we, like cartoonist <a href="http://fionakatauskas.com/political-cartoons/2016-2/">Fiona Katauskas</a>, have no clear answer except to say, it’s a blokey world on the editorial floor . Katauskas puzzles over the matter in her New Matilda article <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2008/11/14/woman-walks-bar/">A woman walks into a bar</a> and in recent correspondence observed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Another theory I have is that it’s the comedy thing. It’s not the politics thing- women are very well represented in political journalism. Comedy of all kinds- whether it be writing, performing or standup- is a different matter. These professions are also largely male-dominated and the myth that women aren’t funny helps to exclude them or discourage them from trying to break in.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181303/original/file-20170808-25514-1ms346z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fiona Katauskas cartoon from her website collection 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://fionakatauskas.com/political-cartoons/2016-2/</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The last cartoons of the four greats at their long-term papers are a varied bunch. The two Age cartoonists left with reflective works during the phoney electoral war that marked the early months of 2016.</p>
<p>Petty shuffles off to the old cartoonists’ home with an evocation of the prime ministers back to Menzies that he had drawn, and a celebration of that scarcely balanced spaceship, democracy. Or is it, instead, a money-dominated plutocracy with the politicians owned by cigar-chomping money-men? With Petty things are always more complicated, never resolved. Since he first drew for Murdoch’s Daily Mirror in 1962, Petty has sustained a powerful and precise critical eye on our travails as a nation, ever sharp and avuncular.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181317/original/file-20170808-20138-nzc1bb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bruce Petty, The Age, 11 April 2016.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Spooner is, by contrast, blunter. He strands a menagerie of his bêtes noires – Turnbull, Shorten, Trump, trickle-down economics, climate alarmism, etc – on the island. He draws himself walking way in disgust, immodestly on top of the water. And the words remind us that cartoons tell truth to power in ways power would rather not hear. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181304/original/file-20170808-13315-qd7584.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Spooner, The Age, 14 May 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The two cartoonists at the Australian left in full flight. Peter Nicholson really has been the pre-eminent cartoon commentator on current events, perhaps with Geoff Pryor of the Canberra Times and now the Saturday Paper. He bowed out unobtrusively with this pre-publicity for a black-tie boxing night at Melbourne’s exclusive Australian Club. However, if you read his cartoons over time, you are wittily apprised of what has been going on, and get a brilliant first draft of history. It’s easy to do at Nicholson’s immaculate <a href="http://nicholsoncartoons.com.au/">archive of his work</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181150/original/file-20170807-16792-bbycm1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter Nicholson’s last cartoon for The Australian, 30 June 2016.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bill Leak was always much more the wild man than Nicholson, and his last cartoon would have caused a controversy had he lived long enough for the predictable outrage to build. He was always after the harsh, prophetic laughter of satire, that moment of shock when you are made to see something you’d rather ignore. Here he presents the NSW Education Minister as cheerfully beheaded in a controversy over Islamicist radicalism at a Sydney High School. It is elegantly drawn and ruthless.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181306/original/file-20170808-3406-1sfcii5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Leak, The Australian, 10 March 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much banality and pompous self-congratulation has been written about the “larrikin tradition” in Australia. Leak was the<a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/explore/insights/russ-radcliffe-remembers-bill-leak"> real thing</a>, however, a much tougher thing than Paul Hogan throwing another shrimp on the barbie. </p>
<p>David Rowe’s contributions for the Australian Financial Review’s readership often enough reflect the cut through nature of the cartoon when set alongside the verbiage of so much political commentary. Here we find a wonderful evocation of Edvard Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream as a parody on our experience as citizen voters confronting the long campaign Prime Minister Turnbull figured would be good for him, and good for us.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181307/original/file-20170808-25514-17bj89i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The full David Rowe cartoon, published in the Australian Financial Review, 9 May 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A loss of centrality</h2>
<p>The more recent arrivals – David Pope, Jon Kudelka, Matt Golding, First Dog on the Moon and the like – are all fine and deserving artists in their own rights, but professional political cartooning is as blokey an activity as it ever was. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181312/original/file-20170808-17186-iyyc46.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cathy Wilcox pictured in 2009 when named the year’s best cartoonist at the Behind the Lines exhibition in Canberra.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lannon Harley, AAP/National Museum of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The younger men are entering a tougher world. Cartoons are still being published, but there is more syndication and (we hear) piecework, so the number of artists with regular jobs is shrinking. It is a clear index of the fact that Australian newspapers are not what they were at the turn of the century, let alone what they were when the departed cartoonists joined them in the 1960s and 70s.</p>
<p>The Fairfax newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, are no longer the essential forums for debate and investigative journalism. For the editorial cartoon in Australia and beyond, this is a problem. As a mode of critical and satirical art, it is particularly well-acclimatised to the printed newspaper, in a way that has not translated well online. </p>
<p>The cartoonists that held sway on newsprint opinion pages lack power and impact several clicks behind the first screen in the increasingly dominant web editions. They lack power because they lack the simultaneous visual context a reader gets in scanning a printed newspaper. While it would be ridiculous to assert that visual satire is disappearing in the digital age, one of the great satirical achievements of the mass media era especially in Australia, the editorial cartoon, is losing its centrality. </p>
<p>This is not a consequence of any waning of satirical power in the cartoons themselves. We are confident that we have demonstrated this strength again in the cartoon chronicle we’ve authored looking at the 2016 campaign. But it is a significant consequence of changing formal and economic models in media, changes that scarcely existed in embryo when we started looking at cartoons. </p>
<p>Two decades ago, we could validly treat the cartoons as an index of comic and satirical commentary on the campaign. Television and radio satire existed in some places, but were hard to capture and impossible to reproduce in our academic work; the cartoons told quite enough of the story and were seen by close enough to “everyone” to be representative of a dissenting view of the carnival of hypocrisy that parades during election campaigns.</p>
<p>The cartoons tell just as good and memorable a story now, but have become a niche in a multi-faceted media landscape rather than the public thing (res publica) they once were. Internet memes, Twitter, mash-ups, Facebook feeds, and a range of other social media make it impossible for students of political satire and comedy to consolidate a corpus for analysis. As a consequence, newspaper cartoons are no longer major components of the central forum that they were in the era of mass media.</p>
<p>As cartoon scholars, we experience this change as loss, though the spirit of caricature and satirical commentary is clearly healthy elsewhere in the media and finding modes of expression for the future. One major trend is the move to longer form caricature, either through animations and collages, or through strip cartooning like that of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/we-cant-stop-the-homosexualification-of-the-nation-but-we-can-lash-out-wildly-in-fear">First Dog on the Moon in the Guardian</a>.</p>
<p>The regular gigs still tend to focus on stationary images, however. Animations as political satire are proving a hard model to crack, as no-one seems willing to foot the bill to sustain high-quality, animated daily satire. Meanwhile, editorial cartoons inhabit an increasingly marginal place in an increasingly fragmented and fractious media landscape.</p>
<p>But their capacity to tell truth to power, demonstrate that the kings and queens of political life have no clothes, and to entertain the public remains undiminished. While this particular mode of satirical representation may be in retreat before the forces of digital media, graphic satire is not going to die while it has such fit meat to feed on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One of the great satirical achievements of the mass media era, the editorial cartoon, is losing its centrality in the digital age. Yet the ‘visual terrorism’ of cartoons can cut through the verbiage of political commentary.
Robert Phiddian, Deputy Dean, School of Humanities, Flinders University
Haydon Manning, Associate Professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74365
2017-03-10T07:20:56Z
2017-03-10T07:20:56Z
Vale Bill Leak: a satirist who played hard and took no prisoners
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160274/original/image-20170310-3676-17cntxi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A picture of Bill Leak supplied by The Australian on Friday, after news of his death.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/NewsCorp, The Australian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you ever found a Bill Leak cartoon mildly amusing, you should take a good, hard look at yourself. Bill’s gauge for emotional volume only needed to be calibrated between 9 and 11 (out of 10). Love the cartoons, or hate them: those are the sane options. No modern Australian cartoonist can claim to be so forceful, either in satirical purpose or in graphic line.</p>
<p>The cartoons put you on the spot; they demand a visceral reaction. It would be a bitter old wowser who claimed honestly to hate the lot, and a weirdly indiscriminate fan who could claim to love them all. Isn’t it curious how the only really funny satire is the stuff we already agree with? Leak divided his audience, image by image.</p>
<p>And, suddenly, there won’t be any more of them. A few hours ago I saw today’s cartoon about the former principal of Punchbowl High School and thought, “There’ll be trouble about that one.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"840014756442333184"}"></div></p>
<p>Well, there wasn’t time for the trouble to develop, because before I had picked the paper up off the nature strip, Bill had died of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/10/cartoonist-bill-leak-australian-dies-aged-61">suspected heart attack</a>. Perhaps if all his critics staged one last howl of outrage, that would be the most fitting memorial to a remarkable exponent of Australia’s great cartooning tradition.</p>
<p>Let there be no talk today of left and right, of conservative or progressive. Bill was one of those rare artists who gives meaning to that ridiculously over-used word “larrikin”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"840033800012853248"}"></div></p>
<p>For a long time he was accused of being a rabid lefty; more recently he has been taking pot-shots at the would-be censors of the same group who used to love him when he was so rude about the Howard Government. What more do you need to know about the 2007 election campaign than this cartoon?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160284/original/image-20170310-3669-1xkrjoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The truth is, he played hard and took no prisoners. There isn’t a sweet comic centre or a cherished community in his work. He took the most robust view of freedom of expression and was prepared to live with the consequences.</p>
<p>In recent years, that included a need for police protection and moving out of his home after cartooning the Prophet Mohammed. He lived by the pen, and has been threatened with the sword, even in 21st century Australia. He was loud in his principles, but they didn’t come cheap.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"839427475352375296"}"></div></p>
<p>His main complaint about the Danish cartoons that caused a controversy in 2005 was that he could have drawn them so much better. Causing offence was a KPI for him, not a risk. </p>
<p>His 2016 cartoon, depicting an Indigenous man with a beer can who could not remember his son’s name, was called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/04/bill-leak-accused-of-racism-in-insulting-cartoon-on-indigenous-parenting">“racist and insulting” by the NSW Aboriginal Land Council</a>. The cartoon sparked a complaint to the Human Rights Commission under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Leak asserted his right to publish on grounds of free speech and strongly defended his cartoon. The complaint was later dropped. </p>
<p>Satire is not a sympathetic art, and the only justification for its continued existence in a liberal and pluralist democracy is that there are still one or two public figures shameless or deluded enough not to respond to mild and sympathetic censure. Maybe one day we will reach a state of universal sense and sensitivity, but until then we need people like Leak.</p>
<p>He was the smart kid at the back of the classroom who sometimes seemed only to want to get a reaction. But, good heavens, could he draw! </p>
<p>Both the visual and conceptual concentration of his work when on song was remarkable. A serial entrant in the Archibald Prize, his portraits show an aesthetic power that also infused his cartooning.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"840012655301541888"}"></div></p>
<p>“ /></p>
<p>Some of his great cartoons combine words and images in a single frame with unforgettable clarity and force. Consider this one from the 2010 Election Campaign:</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160285/original/image-20170310-3703-132nupm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abbott’s angry ears mirror the horns on the "Scapeboat People” and everything about Gillard’s stance suggests fluster and bad faith. I could write on for pages, but it is better for you to pause over the cartoon, to think and feel it through. Then you might go back to the world of political debate with some of the gloss scoured off our over-spun leaders and off our complacent sense of this as a generous nation.</p>
<p>Some cartoonists try to laugh us gently out of our foibles. The now late, still great Bill Leak was not that sort of artist. He was always after the harsh, prophetic laughter of satire, that moment of shock when you are made to see something you’d rather ignore. No wonder he annoyed and delighted us in roughly equal measure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Bill Leak divided his audience, image by image. Causing offence was a KPI for him, not a risk.
Robert Phiddian, Deputy Dean, School of Humanities, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65150
2016-09-09T06:24:30Z
2016-09-09T06:24:30Z
The tragedy of Eaten Fish, the award-winning cartoonist on Manus Island
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137148/original/image-20160909-13383-bhnnzw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Refugee artist Eaten Fish has attracted international attention for his powerful cartoons of life on Manus Island. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Eaten Fish/Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>His cartoons will some day be recognised as important, world-class chronicles of the worst human behaviour since the World War II concentration camps.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus spoke Robert Russell, executive director of Cartoonists Rights Network International, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/09/02/australia-has-detained-this-iranian-refugee-for-years-now-his-courageous-cartoons-shine-a-light-on-inhumane-treatment/">after awarding</a> the 2016 international award for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-09/refugee's-cartoons-about-life-on-manus-win/7828526">Courage in Editorial Cartooning</a>.</p>
<p>The cartoons Russell is referring to are the work of a 25-year-old Iranian man detained on Manus Island. They chronicle everyday life in the detention camp. The artist’s pen name, Eaten Fish, evokes the lives that are being relentlessly consumed, expended, chewed up and spat out in the service of Australia’s calculatedly cruel policy of “deterrence”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137136/original/image-20160909-13383-18a5diw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Eaten Fish via Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Eaten Fish’s drawings, meticulously inked on pages torn from a notepad, document the myriad ways in which the inmates of Manus Island are rendered targets, driven to the edges of endurance in hellish surroundings. They render in minute detail a teeming, nightmare world, charged with menace. </p>
<p>In a drawing of a health centre, doctors and nurses are shown revelling and feasting while the injured and ill call desperately for help. A doorway leads directly to the graveyard, and a coffin lies on the floor. Inside a walled-in enclosure marked Mental Health, a hapless inmate can be glimpsed, to whom staff appear completely indifferent. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137163/original/image-20160909-13367-186kydp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Eaten Fish via Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These depictions are especially poignant in the context of the multiple illnesses suffered by Eaten Fish. He has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a host of other ailments, compounded by the ill treatment and sexual harassment he says he has experienced during his three years in the camp. </p>
<p>In his works, Eaten Fish draws attention to a world cordoned off from the rule of law. In this world, sexual assault and breaches of duty of care and trust are the norms. </p>
<p>The recurring images of CCTV cameras that populate Eaten Fish’s drawings expose a brutal irony: in his drawings the cameras are recording video evidence of criminal acts – to no effect. In the amoral landscape of his artwork, surveillance technologies become just one more instrument of voyeurism and abuse. Who is watching? Who is being protected?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137139/original/image-20160909-13342-xhj6oy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Eaten Fish via Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was a statement Eaten Fish made to us that set in train his campaign to seek help through the medium of his artworks. He wrote to us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tell them I have got serious problem. <br>
Tell them Mr Fish locked himself away because no-one understands him.<br>
Tell them Mr Fish doesn’t want to fight.<br>
Tell them Mr Fish is not sick, these people made him sick.<br>
Tell them Mr Fish does not want to be assaulted.<br>
Tell them I just want the normal life.<br>
I want my right to be a healthy person.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>– Statement by Mr Eaten Fish to RAPBS<br></p>
<p>In support of Mr Fish’s right to be a healthy person, <a href="http://researchersagainstpacificblacksites.org/">Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites</a>, the group we co-founded, launched a campaign to bring the nightmare world he has documented into public view. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137160/original/image-20160909-13383-ky0qnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Judy Horacek’s contribution to the Eaten Fish campaign. Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First Dog on the Moon, the award-winning Guardian cartoonist who had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/20/the-terrible-true-story-of-mr-eaten-fish-manus-island-cartoonist">in communication with Eaten Fish</a> for many months, furthered the campaign by <a href="https://eatenfish.com/">setting up a website</a> to which some of Australia’s best-known cartoonists, including Matt Golding, Judy Horacek, John Kudelka, David Rowe, Cathy Wilcox and many more, contributed, riffing on the motifs and themes of Mr Fish’s own works. </p>
<p>Chris Kelly’s powerful contribution juxtaposed the nightmare world of the cartoonist on Manus Island with a cartoonist in Australia living his dream. The cartoon campaign gained international attention via an impassioned article by Cartoonists Rights journalist Daniel Murphy. The article led to Eaten Fish’s successful nomination for the CRNI award. </p>
<p>The Australian government and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton have so far made no comment on the award to an inmate of its Manus Island camp. Yet the award and the international attention it is bringing are surely an opportunity for the government to demonstrate its good faith and much-avowed commitment to acting in a spirit of humanity. </p>
<p>A ruling of the Papua New Guinea High Court in August <a href="https://theconversation.com/manus-island-centre-set-to-close-but-where-to-for-the-detainees-64061">required the closure of the Manus Island</a> centre, with both Dutton and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declaring that inmates are no longer forced to remain there. But the inmates are still living there in limbo as they have nowhere else to go.
PNG Prime Minister O’Neil, meanwhile, declared “the well-being of asylum seekers and refugees” a primary concern. </p>
<p>This award is an opportunity for the governments of Australia and PNG to work in conjunction with the United Nations – in the same spirit in which <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-03/olympic-refugee-team-overcomes-hardship-to-make-games-debut/7685922">refugees participated in the Rio Olympics</a> on refugee passports. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137161/original/image-20160909-13379-r90rxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jason Chatfield for the Eaten Fish campaign. Click to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We call on the prime minister and his immigration minister to demonstrate their commitment to free speech and transparency by allowing Eaten Fish to travel to the US to accept his own award. It will be [handed out on September 24](Sept. 24 by Australian poet and human rights worker Janet Galbraith (founder of Writing Through Fences).</p>
<p>To ensure Eaten Fish is fit to travel in good health, he could first be brought to Australia for medical attention, as recommended by his medical advocate, Dr Helen Driscoll. </p>
<p>Eaten Fish’s response to the honour he has received is one of both awe and trepidation. He has reached out to the world from the confines of a prison island, but remains caught in it. </p>
<p>The ground-breaking significance of Eaten Fish’s work is brought into sharp focus by <a href="http://cartoonistsrights.org/2016-courage-in-editorial-cartooning-award-winner-announced/">Cartoonists Rights’ awarding statement</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CRNI believes that his body of work will be recognised as some of the most important in documenting and communicating the human rights abuses and excruciating agony of daily life in this notorious and illegal prison camp. His work pushes through the veil of secrecy and silence and layers of fences in a way that only a talented artist speaking from the inside can.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/27/refugee-artist-detained-on-manus-island-wins-international-cartooning-award">strongly denied</a> “the claims made by Cartoonist Rights Network International that transferees are subject to ‘beatings, deprivation of food and, even worse, degrading treatment by the guards’. The department takes allegations of inappropriate conduct very seriously … [and] currently has no evidence that any of these allegations are true.”</p>
<p>But speaking and drawing from the black site of Manus, Eaten Fish has rent the veil of secrecy to portray the violence and abuse that have been consistently denied and dismissed by the Australian government and its operatives.</p>
<p>Having placed the plight of Australia’s refugees on the international stage and accordingly having been awarded this prestigious honour, Eaten Fish should be enabled to stand on this same international stage and accept his award in person. </p>
<p><em>Postscript: Since this article was published, Mr Fish has told the authors that he has been subjected to further violence. We reiterate our fears for his health and safety. He should be brought to Australia for protection and treatment as soon as possible. Mr Fish has also asked us to add this statement to the article: “Every story I said in my drawings is nothing but the truth. I drew whatever happened to me.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suvendrini Perera is a co-founder of Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Pugliese is a co-founder of Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites. </span></em></p>
A young Iranian detained on Manus Island has won a prestigious international award for his cartoons reflecting life there. Our government should allow this young man to fly to the US to accept his award.
Suvendrini Perera, John Curtin Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director, Australia-Asia-Pacific Institute, Curtin University, Curtin University
Joseph Pugliese, Professor of Cultural Studies and Research Director of the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/63524
2016-08-05T04:54:34Z
2016-08-05T04:54:34Z
The white man’s burden: Bill Leak and telling ‘the truth’ about Aboriginal lives
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133195/original/image-20160805-481-1eu3s3w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Leak’s portrayal of an Aboriginal father as neglectful is not representative of Aboriginal family life.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the author.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an Aboriginal mother, I am deeply concerned that our national broadsheet finds the neglect of Aboriginal children to be a source of entertainment and ridicule.</p>
<p>Bill Leak’s cartoon, published in The Australian on Thursday, showed an Aboriginal policeman telling an Aboriginal dad that he needed to sit down and talk to his son about personal responsibility. The father, clutching a beer can, looked at his boy and responded: “Yeah righto, what’s his name then?” </p>
<p>The cartoon has been <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/is-this-bill-leak-cartoon-in-the-australian-racist-20160804-gqkub9">roundly condemned as racist</a> by people including Professor Muriel Bamblett, AM, the chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency Co-Operative, Greens Leader Richard di Natale and the Indigenous affairs Minister Nigel Scullion. </p>
<p>As a daughter of an Aboriginal man and the wife of an Aboriginal man, I know that Bill Leak’s claim that Aboriginal fathers are neglectful is not representative of Aboriginal family life. Instead, this cartoon is representative of a white man’s imagining of Aboriginal men. </p>
<p>Leak’s agenda of <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2016/08/04/artistic-arse-the-great-racist-works-of-cartoonist-bill-leak/">demonising Aboriginal men</a> and ridiculing the abuse of Aboriginal women has been running for well over a decade, and continues a long tradition of white men’s fantasies about the inferiority of Aboriginal people. From racist pseudoscientific theories that suggested we were the missing link between apes and humans to the notion that we were a retrogressed or dying race. </p>
<p>Liz Conor’s book <a href="http://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/skin-deep-settler-impressions-of-aboriginal-women">Skin Deep: Settler impressions of Aboriginal women</a> reveals to us white men’s imaginings of both Aboriginal women and men. Here she cites Queensland police magistrate Charles Henry Eden in 1869: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Certainly the Australian gin is of no beauty, or if she ever possessed any it is soon knocked out of her by the life of privation and misery which she leads, and the brutal conduct of her husband. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Focusing on the brutality of Aboriginal men enabled indifference to the physical and sexual abuse of Aboriginal women at the hands of white men on the frontier and beyond. Let us not forget the more recent claims by former federal ministerial advisor Gregory Andrews who <a href="https://newmatilda.com/2014/07/02/abc-latelines-fake-youth-worker-wins-plum-abbott-govt-job/">appeared on ABC’s Lateline under a false identity</a> and claimed that he “saw (Aboriginal) women coming to meetings with broken arms, and with screwdrivers or other implements through their legs”. <a href="https://chrisgrahamatlarge.com/2012/07/30/bad-aunty-the-truth-about-the-nt-intervention-and-the-case-for-an-independent-media/">These claims </a>(later found to have no basis) formed part of the moral imperative for the Northern Territory intervention. </p>
<p>In response to the criticism that his cartoon has sparked, Leak claims that he is being criticised for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-05/bill-leak-defends-controversial-cartoon/7693244">simply telling the “truth”</a>. But the moral authority of white men and their supposed truths about Aboriginal people needs to be contested.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"761291004284641280"}"></div></p>
<p>Take, for example, Cape York Family Responsibility Commissioner, Magistrate David Glasgow, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2413996.htm">who suggested in 2008</a> that the welfare reforms imposed upon Aboriginal communities should be extended to include “places like Inala and Redbank and places of that nature where children are not looked after properly”. He went on to state, “you know if an analysis was made of school attendance in Inala and some of the Brisbane suburbs, you’d be surprised about how closely they resemble some of the Indigenous communities”. </p>
<p>According to his logic (or his truth), as an Aboriginal mother living in Inala I must be twice as incapable of looking after my children properly. His statement tells us about who he presumes to be neglectful parents - that they are Indigenous and/or poor, and should be subject to regulations and controls over daily life in ways that families in white and wealthy communities aren’t. </p>
<p>Yet oddly enough when children are tragically murdered at the hands of white fathers, the script is reconfigured as an exception rather than the rule. These dads are described as <a>mentally ill</a> and/or usually a “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/port-lincoln-in-shock-after-father-drives-car-off-wharf/7067272">top bloke”</a> or <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/what-led-geoff-hunt-to-kill-his-entire-family/news-story/cf62879f0c887018b149ba20b4aa9561">“lovely guy”</a>. </p>
<p>Leak’s cartoons suggest that Aboriginal dads can never be top blokes, because violence, abuse and neglect is so ingrained in Aboriginal culture. Yet <a href="http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0469b.htm">anthropologist Marie Reay</a>’s study of marital conditions of Aboriginal and “mixed blood” women in northern New South Wales in the 1950s found it was largely white men who were neglectful of their parental duties to their Aboriginal children. </p>
<p>Indeed, she wrote that “mixed blood” Aboriginal women experienced difficulty in trying to “extract money from white men for the maintenance of their children, even by legal means”. Aboriginal women were more likely to marry “mixed blood” Aboriginal men because they “do not object to supporting their wives’ illegitimate children, whereas white men are generally reluctant to do this”. </p>
<p>More recently, the ABC’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2016/07/25/4504895.htm">Four Corners story</a> on the Don Dale detention centre has brought to our attention the abuse and torture of Aboriginal children at the hands of the state, not Aboriginal men. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133192/original/image-20160805-488-1yfwgx4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Leak (centre), pictured with Bob Carr and Libby Gorr in 2001.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SCU media students/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The responsibility that is being absolved in Leak’s cartoon, is one that has long been avoided, and that is of the abuse experienced by Aboriginal people within government run/sanctioned institutions, be they missions, reserves, dormitories, detention centres, or gaols, most of which have been under the stewardship of white men. </p>
<p>The fact that white men were absent from Leak’s caricature about Aboriginal people’s contact with the criminal justice system was also profoundly revealing. Casting an Aboriginal man in the cartoon as the police officer with baton was no misstep on Leak’s part - it sought to absolve white responsibility and restore white virtue.</p>
<p>What is amusing about this to me – as the wife of an Aboriginal man who was a Queensland Police Officer for well over a decade – is that my husband was rarely imagined to be a police officer by non-Indigenous people. In fact, even in uniform, many insisted that he must have been a Police Liaison Officer. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/133205/original/image-20160805-496-crgio7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A father and son.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leak’s cartoon reminds us of the need to interrogate and scrutinize what white men are saying and doing to black Australia (men, women and children) and the lived consequences of these commentaries, caricatures and policies on the lives of black people in this country. This abuse at the hands of white men has so often been hidden beneath a rhetoric of “protection” and “truth”. </p>
<p>This does not by any means absolve the responsibilities of black parents to their children.</p>
<p>But there has been no let up from the state in terms of the surveillance and regulations imposed upon Aboriginal people and families, from “random” street checks by police to the Northern Territory Intervention, not to mention the outrageously high rates of child removals via the justice and child protection systems. </p>
<p>Leak’s cartoon is a distraction and a typical one. The Four Corners expose demonstrated what Aboriginal parents have been saying for some time – that Aboriginal children are not in safer hands when they are in the hands of the state. As a society that should be troubling to all of us. </p>
<p>The issue in front of us is institutional violence by white men against Aboriginal children. Tell that truth Bill.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chelsea Bond receives funding from the Office of Learning and Teaching. </span></em></p>
Bill Leak’s cartoon of a drunk Aboriginal father who doesn’t know his son’s name exemplifies a long tradition of white men’s fantasies about the inferiority of Aboriginal people.
Chelsea Watego, Senior Lecturer, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit (ATSIS Unit), The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60205
2016-05-31T14:28:51Z
2016-05-31T14:28:51Z
There should be no monkeying about with hate speech
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124612/original/image-20160531-1921-utpmag.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cover of the ‘Weekly Standard’, February 2016.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In February 2016, the conservative American magazine the <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/"><em>Weekly Standard</em></a> had as its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/weekly-standard-donald-trump-king-kong-2016-1">cover</a> an image of Republican presidential candidate <a href="http://presidential-candidates.insidegov.com/l/70/Donald-Trump">Donald Trump</a> perched on the top of <a href="http://www.trump.com/real-estate-portfolio/new-york-ny/trump-tower/">Trump Tower</a> with a crushed plane in one hand and Democratic presidential candidate <a href="https://www.hillaryclinton.com/">Hillary Clinton</a> in the other. The caption read, “King Trump”. </p>
<p>In May 2016, South African cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro, better known as <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/">Zapiro</a>, published a <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/cartoons/on-zapiro-cartoons/zapiro-s-cartoon-131128mg-2">cartoon</a> depicting <a href="https://www.npa.gov.za/">National Prosecuting Authority</a> (NPA) head <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-new-NPA-head-Shaun-Abrahams-20150708">Shaun Abrahams</a> as a monkey dancing to the tune of an organ grinder, played by President Jacob Zuma. This was after Abrahams announced that the NPA was going to <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-05-23-shaun-abrahams-shreds-the-npas-reputation">appeal a decision</a> by a full bench of the High Court in Pretoria that found the NPA had made a mistake in April 2009 in <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-29-npas-decision-to-drop-zuma-charges-irrational-set-aside">withdrawing 783 charges</a> of fraud, corruption and money-laundering against Zuma.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124602/original/image-20160531-1951-v33o9x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shaun Abrahams, the head of South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In each case, a public figure is depicted as a primate – the one destroying New York, and the other seeming to be a lackey for his master. Nowhere, as far as I can tell, has there been any outrage about the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/comparing-black-people-to-monkeys-has-a-long-dark-simian-history-55102">simianisation</a>” of Trump, yet Zapiro has come in for some serious criticism and has apologised publicly for his “<a href="http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/13803/it-was-a-mistake-says-zapiro-about-shaun-abrahams-monkey-cartoon">mistake</a>”. The difference then seems to lie in the fact that Trump is white and Abrahams is black.</p>
<h2>Social commentator</h2>
<p>This certainly seems to be the view of social commentator <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/teach-in/teach-in2013/eusebiusmckaiser/">Eusebius McKaiser</a> who <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/05/25/Zapiro-concedes-Abrahams-Zuma-cartoon-was-a-misstep">responded</a> to the Zapiro cartoon thus: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The cartoon is not written or depicted for a society in pre-slavery, white homogenous, mid-West America. He knows his context; he prides himself on his anti-apartheid credentials that he cites regularly.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So context matters … or does it? And when does a public figure’s depiction in the media become hate speech? It is instructive to re-look how the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg dealt in 2010 with what constitutes “<a href="http://www.bowman.co.za/eZines/Custom/Litigation/NovemberNewsletter/HateSpeech.html">hate speech</a>”. The right-wing white lobby group <a href="https://www.afriforum.co.za/home/">AfriForum</a> sought that politician <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/julius-sello-malema">Julius Malema</a>, who was then the president of the African National Congress <a href="http://www.ancyl.org.za/">Youth League</a>, be interdicted and restrained from publicly uttering words, or singing any songs that could reasonably be construed or understood as being capable of instigating violence. The complaint arose from Malema’s use of the well-known struggle song, “<a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-03-29-kill-the-boer-a-brief-history#.V0wgSPl97IU">Dubul’Ibhunu</a>” – translated, it means “kill the farmer”.</p>
<p>The court specifically excluded context, stating that “the true yardstick of hate speech is neither the historical significance thereof nor the context within which the words are uttered, but the effect of the words, objectively considered, on those directly affected or targeted thereby”. South Africa’s <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/EQCact/eqc_main.html">Equality Court</a> declared the song hate speech in 2011.</p>
<h2>Cartoon was a mistake</h2>
<p>Zapiro himself has described the cartoon as a “mistake”. He <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2016/05/26/Zapiro-now-sees-that-depicting-Abrahams-as-a-monkey-was-a-%E2%80%98mistake%E2%80%99">writes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it’s very much part of what cartoonists do and satirists do to have that licence to offend and even sometimes to push the boundaries beyond those that society often thinks of and really offend and take things further.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124617/original/image-20160531-1959-17j9vwo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zapiro’s cartoon of Jacob Zuma and Shaun Abrahams.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Used with permission</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So a mistake – yes. Offensive – yes. Hate speech – really?</p>
<p>As legal academic Ryan Haigh <a href="http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1174&context=law_globalstudies">pointed out</a> in an article in 2006, there is a “tenuous balance” to be “struck between promoting rights and limiting freedoms. South Africa’s attempts to criminalise hate speech in an effort to rise above the inequities endured under the apartheid regime exemplify this difficulty.” </p>
<p>Haigh’s position is clear from the title of his article, which was published in the <a href="http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/"><em>Global Studies Law Review</em></a>: “South Africa’s Criminalisation of ‘Hurtful’ Comments: When the Protection of Human Dignity and Equality Transforms into the Destruction of Freedom of Expression”. He specifically uses the phrase “hurtful comments” as opposed to hate speech because he wants to challenge the clause in the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/2000-004.pdf">Equality Act</a> that excludes “the intention to be hurtful” from the constitutional <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-02.pdf">protection of free speech</a> in South Africa.</p>
<h2>A puppet, a tool, a lackey</h2>
<p>Did Zapiro intend to hurt? Absolutely. But his point was about the head of the NPA being a puppet, a tool, a lackey of the president. It was not about race (it is not clear what “race” the monkey in the cartoon is), but about the fact that both Zuma and the NPA are challenging a court ruling regarding his corruption charges being reinstated.</p>
<p>Writing in a different context – around religious hate speech – constitutional expert <a href="http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/">Pierre de Vos</a> objected to the provision in the Equality Act that prohibits speech that can reasonably be construed as having the intention to be hurtful. He <a href="http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/religious-hate-speech-is-still-hate-speech/">said</a> it has led to people having a “tendency wrongly to invoke the hate speech provision in the Equality Act whenever somebody they do not like (or who they fear) says nasty things about them or about the group they belong to”.</p>
<p>I think he’s right and it applies here too. It’s a good tactic – we’re all focusing on Zapiro’s supposed racism rather than on the issue to which he was drawing our attention. NPA 1, Zapiro 0.</p>
<p>Hate speech is – or should be – about harm. Trump calling Mexicans <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/9-outrageous-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-latinos_us_55e483a1e4b0c818f618904b">rapists</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/07/donald-trump-ban-all-muslims-entering-us-san-bernardino-shooting">Muslims terrorists</a> is harmful: almost every rally he holds is characterised by <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/02/a_list_of_violent_incidents_at_donald_trump_rallies_and_events.html">violence</a> between his supporters and his detractors. Yes, his utterances are protected under the US’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment">First Amendment</a>. Some <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35041402">claim</a> that there is in fact a “hate speech exception” but that this is limited to the use of face-to-face “fighting words” generally expressed to incite violence. Other commentators <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35041402">argue</a> that US law does not even have a definition for hate speech.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/124607/original/image-20160531-1964-12udfq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of Code Pink protesting against Donald Trump in Washington, DC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Shawn Thew</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Harm and offence</h2>
<p>I’m not black so I can’t and won’t claim to know how black people feel. But as a woman and a member of a minority religious group, I too have had my share of hurtful comments tossed at me.</p>
<p>Legally and philosophically, we tend to distinguish between harm and offence – the former is considered much more significant and worthy of prohibition, the latter not so much. The same applies to the distinction between harm and hurt: it is argued that acts that hurt is too broad a category to restrict and doing so leads to unwanted – and unwarranted – reductions in freedom.</p>
<p>Ultimately, restriction of speech that does not incite violence and does not intend to cause harm is a restriction too far. It is a small step from restriction of hate speech to restriction of criticism and disagreement. We surely cannot make laws that prohibit criticism or disagreement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heidi Matisonn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Two recent controversial cartoons depicting people as apes have raised an important question: what are the legal and philosophical distinctions between harm and offence?
Heidi Matisonn, Lecturer, Philosophy, Politics and Law Programme Co-ordinator, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/47472
2015-10-01T08:23:40Z
2015-10-01T08:23:40Z
Free speech is no excuse for Muslim-baiting
<p>Over the last decade, the world has witnessed a number of significant clashes between the rights of free of speech and respect for religion. </p>
<p>On a Sunday evening in May this year, two men in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/us/gunmen-killed-after-firing-on-anti-islam-groups-event.html">Garland, Texas</a> shot an unarmed security guard at a Muhammad-focused art exhibit and cartoon contest sponsored by an <a href="http://freedomdefense.typepad.com/">anti-Islamic organization</a>. The gunmen were killed by a police officer hired to provide security at the event. </p>
<p>This incident marked the most recent in a string of violent acts highlighting an uneasy imbalance between freedom of speech and respect for religious beliefs. It followed the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237">attack</a> earlier this year on the satirical French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, and subsequent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/15/copenhagen-shootings-how-the-attacks-unfolded">shootings in Copenhagen</a>. It also evoked memories of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4677976.stm">Danish cartoon controversy</a> 10 years ago, which resulted in violent protests around the world. </p>
<p>In 2005, Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of a Danish newspaper, invited cartoonists to draw the face of Muhammad as they saw him. Concerned that Danish artists were self-censoring their criticism of Islam due to fear of reprisals, Rose wanted the cartoons “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702499.html">to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter</a>.” </p>
<p>The resulting 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad included one by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. Other images were less provocative, but they were offensive to many Muslims. Some cited <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4674864.stm">general Islamic restrictions</a> on drawing images of the prophet. Others felt the representation of Muhammad reflected <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2006/02/depicting_mohammed.html">negative stereotypes</a> of Muslims and Islam. </p>
<h2>Diversity and values</h2>
<p>Each of these episodes took place in communities struggling to make sense of increasing religious and cultural diversity. This is perhaps more clearly the case in <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/15/5-facts-about-the-muslim-population-in-europe/">France and Denmark</a>, where the number of Muslims has grown rapidly in recent years due to immigration. Muslims have been in the US for <a href="http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/islam-in-america/">much longer</a>, but particularly since 9/11, Americans have grappled with an undercurrent of conflict between so-called “Western” and “Islamic” values. </p>
<p>While there are historical and cultural differences between Denmark, the US and France, all three countries have seen a rise of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/steve-rose/911-racism-islamophobia_b_3908411.html">Islamophobia</a> from some segments of their populations over the past three decades. This is often accompanied by a desire to defend the nation against a perceived threat to free speech. </p>
<p>In all three instances, these sentiments led to the creation of images of the Prophet Muhammad, which in turn provoked violent extremism. </p>
<p>During the coverage of these violent incidents by the media, more often than not, commentators focused on a single issue, arguing that <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/5494602">free speech</a> and respect for religious and cultural differences are mutually exclusive. We must, they argued, support not simply freedom of speech but also the <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nicole-hemmer/2015/05/05/muhammad-cartoon-contest-charlie-hebdo-right-to-offend-must-be-defended">right to offend</a>. This right, sometimes articulated as a duty, was discussed as a necessary aspect of democracy.</p>
<p>But as I have maintained in my <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/secularism-theology-and-islam-9781474257619/">book</a> on the Danish cartoon crisis, this is a dangerously dualistic interpretation of free speech and religious respect. While I believe that free speech is a crucial part of democracy, as a theologian and scholar of religion, I argue that this freedom necessitates respect and responsibility. Simply because we can say something doesn’t necessarily mean that we should. </p>
<p>In the article that accompanied the cartoons in 2005, editor Flemming Rose argued that in a democracy with freedom of expression, one must tolerate scorn, mockery and ridicule. In my work, I maintain that religious and cultural pluralism are core values that democracies should aspire toward. Pluralism, according to scholars like Harvard University’s <a href="http://www.pluralism.org/pluralism/what_is_pluralism">Diana Eck</a>, goes beyond tolerating diversity to actively seeking to engage difference through mutual dialogue. This kind of pluralism is impossible if we deliberately use free speech to provoke, demean or injure others. </p>
<p>We should consider more carefully what “freedom of speech” actually means in context. Despite popular belief, free speech is not absolute, even in the United States. The Supreme Court has made this clear through a <a href="https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf">number of cases</a>. The government can regulate speech in certain instances, with exceptions for circumstances like “fighting words,” or incitement to imminent violent action. The media and individuals self-censor in multiple ways in accord with a sense of shared taste or a tacit agreement of certain boundaries. </p>
<h2>Violence not legitimate</h2>
<p>Condemning the inexcusable violence committed by the shooters in Garland, France and Denmark doesn’t stop us from questioning the justification for the cartoon contest and subsequent exhibit. Are they not simply provocations of a minority by the majority? </p>
<p>Violence isn’t a legitimate response to a religious offense, but the intentional disrespect of a neighbor’s religious sensibilities is also inexcusable in a pluralistic society. There are, of course, legitimate reasons for fearing the beliefs and threats of extremist groups like IS and al-Qaeda. But portraying all Muslims as violent and sponsoring events like the “contest” in Garland will not help prevent religious extremism. These actions encourage violence by extremists, and alienate American Muslims, the vast majority of whom simply want to live their lives peacefully.</p>
<p>In a world that continues to become more diverse, engaging in civil dialogue in an effort to better understand our differences is paramount. We can condemn violent extremism and simultaneously reject the idea that freedom of speech and respect are mutually exclusive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Elisa Veninga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ten years after the Danish cartoon crisis, it’s time to discuss how freedom of religion and freedom of speech can coexist.
Jennifer Elisa Veninga, Assistant Professor of Religious and Theological Studies , St. Edward's University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/42575
2015-06-01T05:17:26Z
2015-06-01T05:17:26Z
Five things we learned from the father of the political cartoon
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83416/original/image-20150529-15247-l1ohtd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Plumb-Pudding in Danger: The greatest political cartoon ever.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>It has been 200 years since the death of James Gillray, the artist widely regarded as the father of the modern political cartoon. It’s an anniversary we ought to celebrate.</p>
<p>In a career that spanned 30 years, from the 1780s to the early 1800s, Gillray produced political cartoons of unprecedented draughtsmanship and satirical verve. To spend time with these images – and I encourage you all to get to the <a href="http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/lovebites/">Ashmolean Museum’s current Gillray exhibition</a> – is to immerse oneself in a world of twisted fantasies and waking nightmares.</p>
<p>Gillray’s imagination is scatological, cynical, and outrageously irreverent. It pushes at extremes, not just visually but conceptually, and seems often to teeter on the cusp of madness (history has its own grim sense of humour and Gillray, like King George III who he so often excoriated, spent his final years in the depths of insanity). Looking at Gillray’s caricatures the difference between light and dark is sometimes hard to see. They discomfort us at least as much as they amuse.</p>
<p>Given the many hundreds of cartoons he created and the astonishing range of his visual (and textual) invention, it’s almost impossible to distil Gillray’s achievements. But here are five reasons to raise a glass to his memory.</p>
<h2>1. An enduring image of megalomania</h2>
<p>Martin Rowson, in his own recent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/mar/21/satire-sewers-and-statesmen-james-gillray-king-of-cartoon">tribute</a> to Gillray, rightly describes The Plumb-Pudding in Danger (1805) as “the greatest political cartoon ever”. </p>
<p>It’s certainly the most quoted and adapted by subsequent visual satirists. Gillray shows Napoleon and the British prime minister Pitt the Younger tucking into the world, cutting off thick continental slices with evident relish.</p>
<p>It’s an image that reduces the complexities of global warfare to a single, suppertime drama, and in doing so it perfectly expresses the pitilessness and absurdity of it all. This isn’t anti-Napoleonic satire. Gillray chides a power hunger that is as much Britain’s and France’s.</p>
<h2>2. Little Boney</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=756&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83409/original/image-20150529-15247-1hw2qzp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image.php?mkey=mw62683">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Visual satirists shape the way we see the political world. This is true now (thanks to Steve Bell, how many of us think of David Cameron as a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/may/13/steve-bells-if-on-david-cameron-working-people-person">large, pink condom</a>?) and was still more the case in an age before photography. </p>
<p>Contrary to the popular myth, Napoleon wasn’t all that short. At about 5ft 6in, he was of average height for the age. In fact, as the British Museum’s current <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/bonaparte_and_the_british.aspx">“Bonaparte and the British” exhibition</a> reminds us, we owe this image of “Little Boney” to Gillray. From 1803 onwards, he delighted in depicting Napoleon as a tiny braggart dwarfed by his British adversaries. The image stuck.</p>
<h2>3. Kings and toilet humour</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83410/original/image-20150529-15221-1kqg7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw63243/Taking-physick---or---the-news-of-shooting-the-King-of-Sweden">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like other satirists of the 18th century, Gillray’s imagination was vividly excremental. But the bowel movements of a reigning monarch were pretty much taboo in visual satire until Gillray’s Taking Physick (1792), which shows Pitt the Younger bursting in upon George III and his consort, Queen Charlotte, as they squat on their latrine. </p>
<p>Pitt brings with him confirmation that the King of Sweden has been assassinated, news that has a laxative effect on the terrified George III. Two centuries on, imagine the uproar were Elizabeth II to be depicted in the same manner.</p>
<h2>4. A sybaritic prince</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83411/original/image-20150529-15221-hluy2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image.php?mkey=mw42985">National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forget the black spider memos. The current Prince of Wales has nothing on his Georgian counterpart. George III’s eldest son was a notorious profligate and in A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion (1792) Gillray captured his dissoluteness with acid precision. Surrounded by empty wine bottles, the leftovers of a huge meal and various symbols of his debts and promiscuity, the Prince slumps languidly in an armchair, holding a fork to his mouth. He looks out at the viewer with an arrogant indifference, while the buttons of his breeches and waistcoat buckle under the pressure of his distended paunch. </p>
<p>The image would haunt George once he came to the throne, with fellow cartoonist <a href="http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/special-collections/exhibitions/current-and-past-exhibitions/gillray/images/cruikshank1.jpg">George Cruikshank adapting it in 1820</a>.</p>
<h2>5. Jokes about national cuisine</h2>
<p>Eating, like excreting, is one of the staple metaphors of Gillray’s work. The tradition of ridiculing the French for their strange diet goes back long before Gillray, but his cartoons did offer a new and more disturbing take on this joke. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83415/original/image-20150529-15221-hk958s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image.php?mkey=mw63254">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the wake of the September Massacre in Paris in 1792, Gillray’s Un Petit Souper depicted the French sansculottes (revolutionaries) as cannibals who gleefully gorge themselves on human body parts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83413/original/image-20150529-15207-okdyjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image.php?mkey=mw61593">National Portrait Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two months later, in French Liberty. British Slavery, Gillray again mocked French eating habits. In the left half of this image a sansculotte munches on a raw onion, while in the right half, by contrast, a corpulent, red-faced Brit eagerly tucks into a disgustingly large joint of beef. Gillray’s title is, of course, ironic. As is so often the case in his cartoons, no one comes out well here.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42575/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Francis Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From a vertically challenged Napoleon to a drunken prince, James Gillray inspired cartoonists for centuries.
David Francis Taylor, Assistant Professor of English, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/40497
2015-04-21T12:20:18Z
2015-04-21T12:20:18Z
Cartoon politics: the literary ghosts of elections past and present
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78632/original/image-20150420-25701-16t3x4e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wherefore art thou Romeo?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Schrank</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With claims and accusations flying left, right and centre during the election period, many of us are looking to cartoonists for much needed daily doses of satire – and sanity. Political cartoons have been a vital part of British political culture for a good 300 years, and it’s striking how often they make sense of the inevitable tangle of issues, interests and personalities by alluding to well-known characters and scenes from literature.</p>
<p>Just last week a <a href="http://www.schrankartoons.com/image/116302577365">cartoon</a> by Peter Schrank cast Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon as the “star-cross’d lovers” of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In a parody of the famous <a href="http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=romeojuliet&Act=2&Scene=2&Scope=scene">balcony scene</a>, Sturgeon leans from the balcony of her Scottish castle to address Miliband, who stands below proffering a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a Trident missile in the other. Unimpressed, Sturgeon points to the weapon and tells Miliband: “You dinnae come anywhere near me with that thing.” The cartoon turns Shakespeare’s drama on its head. A tragedy of passion and illicit love becomes a comedy of awkward political courtship. Miliband, in need of a partner, is but a poor Romeo. Sturgeon, meanwhile, is certainly no pining Juliet.</p>
<p>Shakespearean parody enables the cartoonist to say a great deal in just a single image. Rewind 14 years and we can see Schrank using Shakespeare to much the same effect in <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/SC0146">a cartoon of Tony Blair as Hamlet</a>, which was published in the Independent just a few months before the 2001 general election. Blair was known to be keen for Britain to join the euro but remained publicly cautious on the issue. Schrank’s cartoon, responding to news that two steelworks in Wales were to be closed by their Dutch owners, attacks the prime minister for his vacillation. Gazing at the skull not of “poor Yorick” but rather of British manufacturing, the baffled Blair asks: “To euro or nor to euro?”</p>
<p>Through this use of Hamlet Schrank calls up the whole drama of indecision and – presuming we know how the play ends – gestures towards the damaging political consequences that will attend such paralysis of action. Indeed, so effective is this allusion as a satirical strategy that Schrank repeated it in 2013, when he depicted <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/SCD0122">Barack Obama as Hamlet</a> as a means of scolding him for his failure to act decisively in Syria.</p>
<p>Literature brings to the messy, sometimes senseless world of politics a narrative structure (and often a moral one too) with which we – the readers, the voters – can engage.</p>
<h2>Of monsters and men</h2>
<p>This use of canonical texts, what we tend to call “classics”, isn’t new. Cartoonists have been turning to our favourite books for material since the 18th century. And certain texts become political myths. Works such as Hamlet, Macbeth, <a href="http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/oneitem.asp?imageId=lwlpr05421">Paradise Lost</a>, and Gulliver’s Travels are now ingrained in the way we think and talk about parliamentary politics. </p>
<p>Frankenstein remains an especially popular text with satirists. In 2012, a <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/97502">cartoon by Scott Clissold</a> showed David Cameron, in the role of Victor Frankenstein, triumphantly exclaiming “It’s alive!” as his monster, “Economic Recovery”, awakens on the operating table. Revival, Clissold seems to be suggesting, has been achieved by unnatural means. Rather than breathing new life into the nation’s economy, the government has merely reanimated dead matter. </p>
<p>And a cartoon of 1996 takes up the same scene to make a different point. In Richard Willson’s <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/PC0254">“Dr. Mandelstein’s Monster”</a> Tony Blair, then a fresh-faced leader of the opposition, is depicted as the diabolical creation of a devious Peter Mandelson. Here, the story is one of political puppetry.</p>
<p>These cartoons testify to Frankenstein’s enduring power as a modern cautionary tale. But they also reveal how a text’s elevation to the status of cultural myth often uncouples its characters and narrative from their original iteration. Clissold and Willson take up the iconic scene of James Whale’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/">1931 film</a> but it doesn’t appear in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. There, Victor’s reaction to the Creature’s awakening is one of horror, not triumph. Physically disgusted by his work, he runs from the room.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78754/original/image-20150421-9032-1usxp2q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=579&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘A new illustration of the story of Frankenstein’, John Doyle, 1843.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tabley House Collection Trust / University of Manchester</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much closer to Shelley’s novel is 19th-century cartoonist John Doyle’s <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/mudyxg0">“A New Illustration of the Story of Frankenstein!”</a> of 1843. Doyle depicts Irish nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell as Frankenstein. O’Connell flees in alarm from the monster of his own creation, the demonic personification of a radical politics that has got out of control. “I have been your slave long enough”, the Creature insists.</p>
<h2>Unsavoury ends</h2>
<p>But sometimes we would do well to treat such narratives with caution. The use of Macbeth is a case in point. In 1821 the <a href="http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw66762/The-whole-Truth-or-John-Bull-with-his-eyes-opened-Caroline-Amelia-Elizabeth-of-Brunswick">cartoonist Theodore Lane imagined Queen Caroline</a>, the estranged wife of George IV, as Lady Macbeth. In a parody of Act 5 Scene 1, his cartoon shows a sleepwalking Caroline revealing her troubled, guilty conscience to the nation. The King and government accused the Queen of serial infidelity and Lane rather unsubtly suggests this “brazen” nature by placing her before the shopfront of a “Wholesale Dealers in Brass”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/78735/original/image-20150421-9017-kx2a4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The whole Truth, or John Bull with his eyes opened (Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick), attributed to Theodore Lane, published by George Humphrey, 1 February 1821.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© National Portrait Gallery, London</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lane hammers his point home by doubling the Shakespearean reference. While Caroline exclaims “Out damned spots”, John Bull, personification of England, tells the Queen: “To a nunnery go!” (quoting Hamlet 3.1). Lane may also conjure Ophelia – another of Shakespeare’s “mad” women – here, but his satirical jibe hinges on the figure of Lady Macbeth. His cartoon established the character as <em>the</em> image of the political woman. And this image is far from a pleasant one.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/30024">Margaret Thatcher</a> and, more recently, <a href="http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/oliphant/images/vc009303.jpg">Hillary Clinton</a> and <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/74464">Cherie Blair</a> have all been cast in the same role. The implication, of course, is not just that these women are dangerously ruthless but that they have willingly “unsexed” themselves, jettisoned their femininity, in pursuit of power. The way these images demonise public women is incredibly uncomfortable – surely there are other, better ways of representing them?</p>
<p>As in the 18th and 19th centuries, today’s political cartoons use literary works to plot complex political problems and policies. But we need to remain critically alert to how these narratives are being appropriated and transformed – to the structures and values they impose on events and people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40497/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Francis Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Books and the ballot box have a long and winding history.
David Francis Taylor, Assistant Professor of English, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36256
2015-02-19T19:36:08Z
2015-02-19T19:36:08Z
Seeing the unseen: the stories that comics help us recognise
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71926/original/image-20150213-13198-mdulma.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cartoons can inspire rage – but they can also tell the stories of the marginalised. A panel from The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Lothian Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia, 2006.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>In the month since the the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, the significance of visual representation has been <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30812155">a topic of much discussion</a>. Political cartoons have the potential to reinforce problematic stereotypes – and also to challenge them. </p>
<p>Relying on basic materials such as pencil and paper, cartoon and comics artists can readily respond to political and social issues; at their most impressive they draw out worlds that tend to remain unobserved. </p>
<p>At the same time, our easy access to visual images can, at times, encourage a superficial consideration of their impact. While there is an ongoing tradition of photographic works serving to <a href="http://www.unrefugees.org.au/our-stories/photo-gallery">inform their viewers</a>, the repetition of particular images can also to <a href="http://www.academia.edu/5449431/The_Visual_Dehumanisation_of_Refugees">stereotype its subjects</a> in problematic ways. </p>
<p>In other words, seeing, by itself, is not enough. How and what we see is also at stake. I’d like to draw attention to two comics that encourage readers to engage with stories of difference: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39916.Epileptic">Epileptic</a> (2005) by David B. and <a href="http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html">The Arrival</a> (2006) by Shaun Tan.</p>
<h2>Epileptic</h2>
<p>Originally published in six volumes as L’Ascension du Haut-Mal (1996-2003), Epileptic is the English translation of David B.’s memoir of his experiences growing up with an older brother, Jean-Christophe, who suffers from epilepsy. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71923/original/image-20150213-13188-ithrxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">© 2011, David B. & L'Association.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">L'Association</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rendered in black and white, B.’s lyrical, confronting, and meticulous drawings access the anger and grief that Jean-Christophe’s condition provokes for the narrator, his family, and for Jean-Christophe himself. B. does not excuse any of the characters, including himself, from scrutiny, and indeed this intimate portrait of a family life is what makes the book so compelling. The book also reflects on the privileges and pitfalls that accompany vision. </p>
<p>For example, in one passage, we become aware of the transgressive potential of “looking”. While on a family holiday, Jean-Christophe suffers a seizure. The authorial caption recalls: “[a]ll the tourists rush up, eager to enjoy this new diversion”. The narrator, David, grapples with his own desire to disappear from this scene, before deciding to stay. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71924/original/image-20150213-13192-1t39931.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">© 2011, David B. & L'Association.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">L'Association</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Engorged with excitement, the onlookers’ distorted eyes and bodies swarm the main action. The tension here is elevated when we notice Jean-Christophe’s body, which now takes up the entire width of the middle panel. By playing with the proportions of these different bodies B. conveys the claustrophobic impact of the crowd’s attention on B. and his family. </p>
<p>In turn, this scene also encourages us, more generally, to consider the ways in which we regard Jean-Christophe throughout the book.</p>
<p>Through the use of panels, comics offer windows into alternate worlds that the reader must digest individually, and as a whole. In doing so, readers possess a high degree of involvement in the story, amplified by the operation of the “gutter” – the space in between the panels – that provokes us to draw connections between the panels (or refuse to do so). Moreover, the physical arrangement of the panels across the page, their composition, and content, creates an interpretive pulse that orients our navigation of the text.</p>
<h2>Finding a home</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70451/original/image-20150129-22292-1ljpc8h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shaun Tan – The Arrival.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These features are also apparent in Shaun Tan’s remarkable, and widely celebrated book The Arrival, which depicts the story of “the migrant”, who flees his homeland for a new place. In this place, he meets other individuals, many of whom also furnish stories of displacement. In one encounter, the migrant recalls a fearful memory from his place of origin with a new acquaintance. In response, the latter gestures to himself as the panels zoom towards his eye.</p>
<p>The last three panels in this sequence emphasise the commencement of the man’s story, positioning us to regard the upcoming narrative through “someone else’s eyes”. The double-page spread overleaf then plunges us into his memories. The size, shading and timing of the panels all contribute to our involvement in the story, and encourage our consideration of the characters we meet alongside the migrant.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71927/original/image-20150213-13226-d0boxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Lothian Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia, 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hachette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his introduction to Joe Sacco’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/769712.Palestine">Palestine</a>(1996), Edward Said recalled the fervour with which he consumed comics as a young reader, explaining that comics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>seemed to say what couldn’t otherwise be said, perhaps what wasn’t permitted to be said or imagined, defying the ordinary processes of thought, which are policed, shaped and re-shaped by all sorts of pedagogical as well as ideological pressures. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Comics encourage their readers to see again, and see differently. In a world that offers, on the one hand, an abundance of things to see and, on the other, frequently limited perspectives on what we see, and how our vision is framed, comics offer a modality that encourage seeing differently. This is particularly important when it comes to depicting marginalised individuals and cultural groups. </p>
<p>In cultures where appearances often count for more than they should, comics create new ways of seeing the world. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: Golnar will be answering questions between throughout the day on Friday February 20. You can ask your questions about the article in the comments below.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Golnar Nabizadeh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In the month since the the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, the significance of visual representation has been a topic of much discussion. Political cartoons have the potential to reinforce problematic stereotypes…
Golnar Nabizadeh, Honorary Research Fellow in English and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36076
2015-01-09T15:29:25Z
2015-01-09T15:29:25Z
In praise of the cartoonist – solitary, studious and searing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68584/original/image-20150109-23810-1i1cl89.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Stéphane Charbonnier (Charb) lost his life in the Paris shooting.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/home_of_chaos/16231886125/in/photolist-qJmEeB-qFusVs-pM1i12-qHH5SN-qrmVua-qFuDCE-qrknjc-qrMDQ5-qJhwvA-qHAgec-qrdokU-qrmUV4-qFsdPq-qrkvyD-qFt8xb-qHH8W3-qrmTGT-qFuuRS-qG4Xvs-qJPHDP-8cQzgS-8cMgxv-8cMgs2-bR4sJi-bpKNLw-bCa1X7-bL39o2-5CUCXi-5CUD6V-5CYVRs-pLTKPN-pM6Sxc-qrE3Dh-8dmkB7-dMgWha-bBJdWS-csg3Ny-ciRf2L-cijPBC-cUtjhw-c5o5VS-bxszQC-bZLUfC-bWjsX1-cKiiew-7eQSJU-d1i2Wh-8NruEo-9p45xM-qeJUKa">thierry ehrmann</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>They think and work differently, cartoonists. Anyone who has spent any time in an editorial office will know that cartoonists dream and draw on their own, working to the rhythm of their thoughts – if they work in an office at all, that is. Many cartoonists work miles from the magazines and newspapers which they adorn; some are reclusive and solitary.</p>
<p>Most journalists thrive on exchanging ideas and tips, operating in a team, nourishing a network. The cartoonists of my acquaintance consult the newsroom’s knowledge and bounce their ideas off people, but they are solo flyers. Their business is to look at the news from a completely unexpected angle. That can’t be done from inside a herd of reporters all running in the same direction. I have met courteous cartoonists and rude ones, but I have never met one with weakly-held opinions. </p>
<p>The cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo were a little different. From time to time they <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-30722009">met as a group</a> to plan projects – is the appropriate collective noun a doodle of cartoonists? – and I imagine these were lively conversations. It was at one these meetings this week in Paris that 12 people were murdered, some of France’s wittiest draughtsmen among them.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=758&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68576/original/image-20150109-23812-109z53d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=952&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daumier’s ‘Past, Present, Future’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rocor/8064914357/in/photolist-oGYWwE-oEYVLh-o4A9hg-8sYyNi-eSDRKo-eJkTWa-mzqXkY-czAK8A-czAGgh-dhEN4x-mzqVx9-dhzZcQ-6w71rC-czAEY7-czAJnm-czADG3-qycTGT-czAE8o-czAEEU-czAFQN">rocor</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charlie Hebdo <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/what-is-charlie-hebdo-banned-and-resurrected-but-always-in-the-grand-tradition-of-gallic-satire-9963721.html">harks back</a> to the obscene ribaldry of the underground newsheets that were directed at public figures like Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution and to the 19th century caricatures of Daumier.</p>
<p>In a country which reveres the skills of cartoonists and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7246634.stm">loves bandes dessinées</a> (strip cartoons), the team at Charlie Hebdo set out to be as irreverent, obscene and annoying as possible to the largest number of targets they could splatter in each edition. In France, caricature which insults the powerful is a long tradition.</p>
<h2>Reading your thoughts</h2>
<p>There is a reason why collections of cartoons sell well as books and it goes beyond wanting to keep something amusing on the shelf in the loo. Cartoonists nail a thought which lies under the surface, sometimes opinions which people are hesitant to say out loud. Their job is to distill a perhaps complex, extensively-reported issue to a single image containing an idea.</p>
<p>The greatest cartoonists capture and bottle the spirit of an age. They do so by developing an instinct for seeing and hearing what people are thinking inside their heads. There’s an old saying that societies reveal their deepest anxieties in the topics they joke about. In the days of the Cold War, jokes in central Europe were mostly about politics and power. Cartoonists sense these neuroses and put them in a language which often needs no words and which knows no borders.</p>
<p>Anglo-American humour features sex. Just after president François Hollande had been photographed making nocturnal trips to his mistress on a scooter, the Telegraph’s pocket cartoonist Matt drew a middle-aged couple sitting in their armchairs at home. The husband is wearing a crash helmet and visor. His wife is angrily asking: <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/?cartoon=10622438&cc=10622414">“Are you seeing someone else?”</a></p>
<h2>Solo artist</h2>
<p>It is not surprising that cartoonists often work alone and dislike explaining themselves. I once went to interview Le Monde’s great cartoonist Plantu, hoping to use his opinions as an unusual way of looking at France, whose politicians he skewers so deftly. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68583/original/image-20150109-23789-13t6otg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plantu’s response in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nykaule/16037791069/in/photolist-qrcSx8-8aSNeY-87MK6w-8aUtuJ-8aTQdC-6B68vD-9uLZE2-7Kr7dh-3whJhc-7Kr6Zd-7Kn9Ec-8Z7XuZ-8Zb1BJ-8Zb1Jm-8Z7X38-8Z7YJk-8Zb27w-8Z7Xc2-8Z7XkZ-8Z7Xor-8Z7XUg-8epwGm-8epwMS-8emg1i-8epwKf-qHwugB-qJ9xic-qJhwjU-qJ9QDV-dD5hqx-qrQc2v-pMmDmU-dD5hSx-8Zb2eY-4XbY9m-7Kr6Du-7Kr7o1-7Kr5BW-7Kn9VV-7Kr5QN-7Kr6vU-7Knaak-7Kr6hb-7Knas2-aeEBe4-aeHo1y-9tLmMy-bBdJLp-8RnjBP-e7HELW">Nykaule</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He sat patiently with me in his tiny studio high up on an obscure street in Paris and tried to answer my questions, but the interview was a failure. His language is not words.</p>
<p>The cartoonist’s clout comes not from the drawing, but from the quality of the idea. Peter Brookes of The Times, the <a href="http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk/peter-brookes">greatest political cartoonist</a> of his generation, says that “the idea behind the cartoon is the tricky bit and what I wrestle with for the best part of the day”.</p>
<p>So if you visit the office of a newspaper or magazine, remember that some of the most original and potent ideas are being generated by that small, shy figure tucked away in the corner: the cartoonist.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36076/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Brock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
They think and work differently, cartoonists. Anyone who has spent any time in an editorial office will know that cartoonists dream and draw on their own, working to the rhythm of their thoughts – if they…
George Brock, Professor of Journalism, City, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/36014
2015-01-08T06:52:04Z
2015-01-08T06:52:04Z
Cartoonists are defiant in their response to Charlie Hebdo attack
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68459/original/image-20150108-1974-1l84umf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">David Pope's cartoon posted on Twitter this morning.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/davpope/status/552844593046097920">David Pope, Twitter.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cartoonists and satirists in “the West” are confronted with the risks of their expressive freedom today as a consequence of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">assassinations at Charlie Hebdo</a> in Paris. </p>
<p>This is how illiberal authoritarians respond to satire – not with laughter, shamelessness or low-grade malice, but with violence. It can be an easy life as a cartoonist in places with freeish presses. As long as you are funny, you get to criticise the powerful with something close to impunity.</p>
<p>In Iran, or North Korea, or Myanmar it is really dangerous to ply this trade. In Sydney, or Chicago, or Paris it’s not supposed to be like that. We just know that satirists with a licence to mock are part of the freedom we enjoy, that they provide a check against the omnipresent desire of power to blind us with bulldust. </p>
<p>Suddenly, for cartoonists around the freeish world, it is not like that, and you can see it in the shock registered in cartoons that are being tweeted around the world in recent hours. </p>
<p><em>David Pope:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552844593046097920"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Dave Brown:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552980869338517504"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Ruben L. Oppenheimer:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552848047089405952"}"></div></p>
<p>So the instant response of cartoonists is to stand firm against the threat and announce solidarity. This is happening more consistently, I think, than it did last time we had a big cartoon controversy. The Danish cartoons of Muhammed, even though they were republished in Charlie, were clearly a right-wing provocation of Islam, aligned to xenophobic politics.</p>
<p>As a lot of cartoonists since the 1960s come broadly from the left, they were not so vigorous in their defence of images they often found simply offensive and mostly amateurish.</p>
<p>The Charlie Hebdo case is different. First because people have actually been gunned down rather than anathematised. Second because the French magazine is almost canonical as a bastion of post-60s left-wing anti-establishment dissent. </p>
<p>Many more cartoonists have woken today to feel viscerally that four of their own have been murdered for fulfilling their vocation as questioners of authority.</p>
<p><em>Jean Jullien:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552829637215408128"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Boulet:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552846084691996672"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Joep Bertrams:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552822895106613248"}"></div></p>
<p>It’s hard to tell what might follow from this. We’ll need to keep an eye on whether the terrorists win over the months and years to come by causing restraint among cartoonists on the topic of Islam. </p>
<p>Tomorrow there will be even more brave expressions of solidarity in newspapers, magazines and online. But will editors and cartoonists decide to pick different fights in 18 months? It will be hard to tell definitively, but those of us who think satire an essential part of freedom of expression should keep a watching brief.</p>
<p>Another, more positive consequence might be the development of a coalition between left and right on questions of free speech and satiric licence. Perhaps they can agree more clearly on condemning the authoritarian and oppressive forms of ideology, which at present include a thread of Islam. </p>
<p><em>Plantu:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552820642987270144"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Tommy Dessine:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552831294217134080"}"></div></p>
<p><em>Zep:</em></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"552851362636394498"}"></div></p>
<p>I want to take the religion out of this and treat it as a matter of a clash of political cultures. Not because religion doesn’t matter, but this is clearly a case of religion in its political aspect. Religious values are therefore like other values (egalitarianism, tolerance, freedom to offend) that need to be brokered in political space.</p>
<p>Cartoons clarify this because they pack so much information, thought and provocation into such a small space. So this is an interesting challenge to the functional impunity assumed by cartoonists in Australia and elsewhere. In a way it’s invigorating – it demonstrates that what they do really matters. But it is a fearful thing too.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Read <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/charlie-hebdo-attack">further coverage</a> of the Charlie Hebdo attack.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Cartoonists and satirists in “the West” are confronted with the risks of their expressive freedom today as a consequence of the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo in Paris. This is how illiberal authoritarians…
Robert Phiddian, Deputy Dean, School of Humanities, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/28845
2014-07-08T20:16:26Z
2014-07-08T20:16:26Z
The Australian helped political cartoonists sharpen their edge
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53232/original/sfv3dq5x-1404782292.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are political cartoons a blunt instrument? The Australian newspaper played an important role in honing cartooning culture.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martin Cathrae</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As late as 1976, in what must have been one of the last things he wrote, the poet and controversialist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcauley-james-phillip-10896">James McAuley</a> asserted, in a foreword to a volume of cartoons by <a href="http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/molnar-george-14136">George Molnar</a> entitled <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-tales-George-Molnar/dp/0091301408">Moral Tales</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Satire is essentially a conservative art. Making fun of aberration from an eccentric point of view isn’t very rewarding. Good satire measures the angle of divergence of human thought from the norm – that is, from commonsense realism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why does this sound so wide of the mark as an account of modern Australian political cartoons? Why do we now tend to assume that cartoons and cartoonists are anything but conservative? It sounds like a world we have lost, if it ever existed at all. </p>
<p>The Australian newspaper is currently celebrating <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/50th-birthday">50 years in print</a>. Paradoxical as it now seems – and has seemed since a point in 1975 (October 15 by my reading) when the paper’s editorial line definitively turned – the early Australian provides a large part of the answer to these questions. </p>
<p>The 1950s were a quiet time for political cartooning in Australia. <a href="http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/OLD?id=CZuZ&idtype=oldid">Smith’s Weekly</a> had died of natural causes in 1950 and The Bulletin was long past its best, increasingly confined to a rural rump or readers and a reactionary politics. </p>
<p>Daily newspapers often lacked editorial cartoons entirely, making do with sporting caricatures and apolitical “funnies” for comic relief. Only George Molnar at the Sydney Morning Herald commanded a prominent place for visual satire, and his focus was often more on social than political critique.</p>
<h2>Cartoons make a comeback</h2>
<p>In the 1960s Australian political cartoons were transformed by three major events. </p>
<p>First was the arrival of cartoonist <a href="http://www.daao.org.au/bio/les-tanner/">Les Tanner</a> at the Bulletin in 1961, after editor <a href="http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/horne/">Donald Horne</a> was given the job of reviving or killing it by Frank Packer. </p>
<p>Horne took “Australia for the White Man” from the banner, injected life into the weekly, and employed Tanner, a communist though not a vocal one, to take the visual tradition away from the paths trod by Cold Warriors such as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lindsay-norman-alfred-7757">Norman Lindsay</a> and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scorfield-edward-scafe-11639">Ted Scorfield</a>. </p>
<p>The Bulletin was the home publication for the Australian black and white art tradition, and Tanner used his tenure as cartoon editor there to work a transformation both in style and content for cartoons. </p>
<p>To cut a long story short, the cartoons Tanner drew and sponsored were more visually and politically radical than the house style of the 1950s, especially in a departure from the caricatures and topoi of the laconic bush tradition. </p>
<p>Tanner was also integral to the third major event – when he left the Bulletin in 1967 to go to the Melbourne Age and usher in the visual and critical aspects of the great era of that paper under <a href="http://www.melbournepressclub.com/hof/graham-perkin">Graham Perkin</a> and his successors. But the numerate among you will note that I have leapt from first to third. </p>
<p>It is the second part of this story that I will now focus on.</p>
<h2>Bruce Petty at The Australian</h2>
<p>One of the artists Tanner published a lot at the Bulletin in the early 1960s was <a href="http://www.daao.org.au/bio/bruce-leslie-petty/">Bruce Petty</a>, whose nervous line and busy images stressed the extent to which cartoons are political commentary rather than illustration. </p>
<p>After travel to London where he worked on Punch, his first regular gig as a first political cartoonist at Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Mirror in Sydney in 1963. He then <a href="http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/870/4/ch%2012_phiddian.pdf">went to Canberra</a> in 1964 for the start of The Australian:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all went to Canberra like a big wagon train. We were there to enlighten the world. I was pretty much allowed to choose what to draw, but it would be the story of the day or yesterday’s story. </p>
<p>And in those years the stories were the most powerful that I have known. Australia joined the rest of the world. Asia was joining, but not on our terms. We each had to invent politics based on fairly random inputs and experience. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Petty’s cartooning was one of the material ways in which the early Australian shook up a fairly stagnant broadsheet market. Consider the cartoon below, published the day after Anzac Day 1969. </p>
<p>By then, the moratorium movement had substantially turned public opinion against the war. How would one bid up the anti-war pressure on the holiest day of Australian nationalism? Since Alan Seymour’s play <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/One-Day-Year-Alan-Seymour/?isbn=9780207133305">The One Day of the Year</a>, some resistance to Anzac Day jingoism had been growing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53118/original/88qrv8mn-1404700376.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bruce Petty’s cartoon for The Australian, dated April 26, 1969. Reproduced with the artist’s permission.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is an affront to social and artistic convention. </p>
<p>The scale of the dismembered corpse – as much of Long Tan as of Gallipoli, as much a Viet Cong as an Anzac – is shocking. A parade of chattering and hymn-singing spectators is detouring around an emblem of the horror of war worthy of Goya. </p>
<p>They are ignorant and almost brutally complacent. Their parade has nothing to do with the reality of war and everything to do with the deceptive schemes of politicians.</p>
<p>Would any newspaper print this cartoon today, let alone anywhere near Anzac Day?</p>
<p>The attack on Anzac for Petty and his colleagues was an attack on the old, insular, white Australia of the mid-20th century. The Australian was part of that socially progressive movement that wanted to disrupt the complacency of “the Lucky Country”. </p>
<p>It has always been a vanguard newspaper, wanting to shift the nation’s sense of itself, not merely to reflect it. Now its view of Anzac is part of a patriotic movement that mourns the passing of White Australia and supports the expansive view of US cultural and military power; yet the paper still campaigns for many sorts of economic and social reform. </p>
<p>The remystification of Anzac that is breaking over us in a tsunami of sentiment as the centenary arrives is a wide-spread phenomenon. </p>
<p>The Oz’s part in this is very different from its part in the anti-militarism of the Vietnam War, but it is part of a continued ambition not merely to express but to shape and influence public opinion. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28845/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Phiddian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As late as 1976, in what must have been one of the last things he wrote, the poet and controversialist James McAuley asserted, in a foreword to a volume of cartoons by George Molnar entitled Moral Tales…
Robert Phiddian, Deputy Dean, School of Humanities, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.